B2B Application Integration
Using Web Services
Nagarjuna Nagulapati
Under the guidance of
Dr. Daniel Andresen (Major Professor)
Dr. Torben Amtoft
Dr. William J. Hankley
Outline
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Problem Statement
Solution
Application Integration Technologies
B2B Application Integration & Web
Services
SOAP
SOAP Style & Encoding
Implementation
Performance Evaluation
Problem Statement
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Market Globalization
• Need to stay ahead of competitors
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Solutions from multiple vendors
• Unable to share information and isolated
functionality
Solution
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Application Integration(AI)
• Application integration is the real-time
controlled sharing of data and business
processes among any connected applications
and data sources within inter and intra
organizations.
Advantages
Increased productivity
 Controlled procurement processes
 Interoperability with partners
 Reuse of existing systems
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Types of AI
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Enterprise Application Integration
• Integrating applications within an enterprise
• EDI – based on ANSI standards
• Point-to-point integration
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B2B Application Integration
• Integrating applications across enterprises
• Middlewares – facilitate communication
between two or more software systems
• Point-to-point NOT feasible
Why Web Services?
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Java Middleware Technologies
• RMI, JMS - Language dependent
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Distributed objects
• CORBA, DCOM - Platform dependent
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Message Brokers
• Require sweeping changes in participating
applications and hence expensive
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Open standards, platform and language
independent, loosely-coupled integration
B2B AI and Web Services
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Organizations favoring open standard
protocols
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XML becoming lingua franca for data
formatting and interpretation
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Web Services are XML-based
middleware built on open standards
Web Services
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Web services are middleware components that
implement business logic via services and expose
these services programmatically over the web,
which could be invoked by service clients using
SOAP over HTTP
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Based on open standards like UDDI, WSDL,
SOAP, XML, HTTP
Separation of specification from implementation
Web Services Stack
Transport protocol – HTTP, SMTP
 Data encoding – XML
 Standard Message Structure – SOAP
 Service Description – WSDL
 Service Discovery - UDDI
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Web Services Framework
Points to service
WSDL
Describes
service
UDDI
description
Publishes
Finds
service
service
Web
Service
SOAP
Client
HTTP
proxy
SOAP
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Simple Object Access Protocol, a lightweight,
message-based protocol built on XML and
standard Internet protocols, such as HTTP and
SMTP for information exchange in a decentralized
environment
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Defines specification for message structure and
data encoding
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Facilitates structured and typed messages to be
exchanged
SOAP
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SOAP message must contain a SOAP envelope, a
SOAP body and optional SOAP header
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Encoding - serialization of data inside a SOAP
message
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SOAP encoding is based on XML Schemas and
relies on the XML Schema data types, namespace
and the type attribute
SOAP
SOAP envelope
Container to hold the
SOAP message
<soap:envelope>
<soap:header>
…………………
</soap:header>
<soap:body>
<add>
<num1 xsi:type="xsd:int">5</num1>
<num2 xsi:type="xsd:int">10</num2>
</add>
</soap:body>
</soap:envelope>
SOAP header
Sequence numbers,
authentication credentials
SOAP payload
Method calls, parameters,
Application-specific data
WSDL
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Describes Web Service methods to
heterogeneous clients in a platform and
language independent manner
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SOAP toolkits generate proxy classes using
WSDL
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Service contract which specifies the
methods available and type information
needed to properly compose SOAP requests
WSDL
public int add(int num1, int num2)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf8" ?>
<definitions >
Describes custom or complex
<types />
Data types
<message name="addSoapIn">
<part name="num1" type="s:int" />
<part name="num2" type="s:int" />
Number and type of input and output
</message>
parameters
<message name="addSoapOut">
<part name="addResult" type="s:int" />
</message>
<portType name="sampleSoap">
<operation name="add">
Methods available along with input
<input message="tns:addSoapIn" />
<output message="tns:addSoapOut" />
and output messages
</operation>
</portType>
<binding name="sampleSoap" type="tns:sampleSoap">
<soap:binding transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http" style="rpc" />
<operation name="add">
<soap:operation soapAction="http://tempuri.org/add" style="rpc" />
<input>
<soap:body use="encoded" namespace="http://tempuri.org/" encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
/>
</input>
<output>
<soap:body use="encoded" namespace="http://tempuri.org/" encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
/>
</output>
Describes style and encoding of the SOAP messages
</operation>
for each operation
</binding>
<service name=“Sample">
<port name="sampleSoap" binding="tns:sampleSoap">
<soap:address location="http://agena.cis.ksu.edu:8080/axis/services/Sample" />
</port>
Describes entry points to web service
</service>
HTTP-POST, HTTP-GET, SOAP
</definitions>
Implementation
Web Services feasibility in integrating
heterogeneous applications
 B2B application modeling online
trading system’s supply chain
management
 Web Services integrate the business
processes of participating
applications in a real-time fashion
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System Architecture
Publisher
(.NET)
Web Service
Purchaser
(.NET)
Web Service
SOAP OVER HTTP
Web Service
VENDOR
(J2EE)
Technologies used
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ASP.NET, ADO.NET, C#
ASP.NET WebMethod Framework
J2EE 1.3.1, EJB
AXIS 1.1 Framework
JBOSS 3.2.1
XDoclet
IIS 5.0
Microsoft ACT
Message Flow
Purchaser
Vendor
Publisher
orderAvailability()
orderAvailabilityResponse
confirmRequest()
Delegates request to EJB
which processes the request
orderInvoice
invoiceConfirmation
orderInvoice
Inserts order into
database
Detailed System Architecture
Publisher
(.NET)
Database
IIS Server
Unmarshalls SOAP message to
native .NET method calls
.NET web service
JBOSS Application Server
IIS Server
J2EE web service
proxy
Purchaser
(.NET)
SOAP/HTTP
Vendor
(J2EE)
.NET web service
Marshalls native .NET method
calls to XML
Business tier
EJB
EJB
Unmarshalls SOAP message to
native Java method calls
Database
RPC-Style ~1200 LOC
Document-Style ~1350 LOC
Class Diagram
Publisher Module
2 classes
Web Services
Purchaser Module
12 classes
Vendor Module
8 classes
SOAP processing in .NET
IIS SERVER
ASP.NET
Web Service
Handler
SOAP
Request
SOAP
Response
HTTP
Handler
ASP.NET
Engine
XmlSerializer
HTTP modules
Service
Object
SOAP processing in AXIS
JBOSS APPLICATION SERVER
JETTY
WEB SERVER
SOAP MESSAGE PROCESSOR
EJB’S
Handlers
SOAP
Request
WS CONTAINER
SERVICE
provider
HTTP
Handler
SOAP
Response
Serialization
Framework
Handlers
Axis engine
Web service
Demo
SOAP style & encoding
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RPC/Encoded
One-to-one mapping between SOAP
payload elements and service method
 Encoding is based on Section 5, SOAP
specification
 SOAP framework handles (de)serializing
of method calls to/from XML
 Application developer deals with native
objects
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SOAP style & encoding
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Document/Literal
No one-to-one mapping between SOAP
payload and service method
 SOAP payload can contain arbitrary XML
 Encoding is based on the XML schema
agreed upon by both parties
 Application developer deals with raw
SOAP payload
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RPC (Vs) Document-style
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public int add(int num1, int num2)
<soapenv:body>
<ns:add>
Method name
<num1 xsi:type=“xsd:int”>10</num1>
parameter
<num2 xsi:type=“xsd:int”>8</num2>
parameter
</ns:add>
</soapenv:body>
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public Document add(Document operation)
<soapenv:body>
<ns:operation>
<add>10</add>
<add>8</add>
<multiply>1</multiply>
<multiply>2</multiply>
</ns:operation>
</soapenv:body>
Arbitrary XML
Performance Evaluation
SOAP payload (Vs) Processing time
2.65
2.6
Processing Time (log)
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2.55
RPC-Style
2.5
ASPWEB
Windows Box
Dual processor
292 MHz, 512MB
Doc-Style
Agena
Solaris Box
360 MHz, 128MB
2.45
2.4
2.35
5
10
15
SOAP Payload
20
Performance Evaluation
SOAP payload (Vs) Requests/Sec
4
3.5
3
2.5
Req/Sec
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RPC-Style
2
Doc-Style
1.5
1
0.5
0
5
10
15
SOAP Payload
20
Results analysis
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Results
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RPC/Encoded solution performed better than
Document/Literal solution
Theoretically Document/Literal should perform
better
Analysis
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Implementation was limited to simple data
types in RPC/Encoded
• Document/Literal solutions perform better for complex
data types
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Axis serialization (vs) Custom serialization
• SAX (Vs) DOM
Lessons learned
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Service-oriented application development
in both .NET and J2EE
Better understanding of SOAP protocol,
message structure, encoding and SOAP
message processing in .NET and Apache
AXIS frameworks
Application integration technologies
currently being used in enterprises and
how they work.
Implementation issues
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Insufficient reference resources on the
Document-styled Web services
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Interoperability between .NET and J2EE
technologies still in its nascent stages
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Working simultaneously with both .NET
based API’s and Java based API’s
Conclusion
SOAP is text-based, Web Service calls
may be too slow for applications that
require frequent and fast
communications
 Web Services are not suitable for
applications which need to access
wide variety of objects and classes
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Future work
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Security is utmost concern
• Authentication credentials in SOAP headers
• User/Passwd, Security tokens and SSL
• Encoded NOT encrypted
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Consortia and organizations working
towards the interoperability and
security of Web Services : WS-I & WSSecurity
References
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www.msdn.com
http://ws.apache.org/axis
http://java.sun.com/blueprints/webservices/using/webservbp3.html
http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?AxisProjectPages/DotNetInterop
http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/XMLwebservices/gxa_overview.aspx
http://www.aei.on.ca/index.php/aei/notes/edi
http://ecommerce.about.com/cs/b2bresources/a/aa080108a.htm
http://www.topxml.com/b2b/articles/ts4b2b/default.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/enus/dnpag/html/eappint-ch01.asp
http://www.darc.com/software/2ndLevelArt/News/Application_Integration_for_EBusiness.pdf
http://www-900.ibm.com/developerWorks/cn/xml/developerConf/
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-whichwsdl/
http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb
www.msdn.com/newsgroups
Acknowledgements
Dr. Daniel Andresen
 Dr. Torben Amtoft
 Dr. William J. Hankley
 Sterling Hanenkamp
 Travis Bradshaw
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Questions?