Web services protocol stack
The Web service protocol stack is the collection of protocols that are gradually developing to define, locate, implement, and make Web services interact with ecah other. These are deployed in four levels:
- Service Transport: It is responsible for transporting messages between applications and includes protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, FTP, as well as the more recent Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol [BEEP].
- XML Messaging: It is responsible for encoding messages in a common XML format so that messages can be understood at either end. Currently, this includes XML-RPC and SOAP.
- Service Description: It is use for describing the public interface to a specific Web service, normally WSDL.
- Service Discovery: It centralises services into a common registry, and provides easy publish and locate functions. At present, UDDI is used for service discovery.
Web service protocol stack also includes a whole range of recently set up protocols: WSFL, SOAP-DSIG), or SOAP-DSIG.