Chapter 8 Using the Sybase Web Services Client Proxy

The role of WSDL in the Client Proxy

Web Service Description Language (WSDL) is currently the recommended method for telling the client programmer how to invoke a Web service. The WSDL document provides information about the method signature, the location of the Web services, and the SOAP action needed for invoking a Web service. Each Sybase Client Proxy comes with a WSDL document that describes all the Web services that the server side intends to make available to the client. The WSDL file used by the Client Proxy is specified in the ClientProxy.props file as a property. The property's value can be modified so that another WSDL file may be used. Additionally, the user may specify the WSDL file to be used when instantiating the SoapProxy object. This second method of specifying the WSDL file allows the user to invoke multiple Web services described by multiple WSDL files within a single application. No changes are necessary to the ClientProxy.props file when you use alternate or multiple WSDL files. This alternate method of specifying the WSDL document requires that you provide the path-qualified name to the SoapProxy constructor. For a code example, see "Setting the WSDL file name".

The WSDL specification promotes but does not require the separation of the WSDL into two physical files - an interface file and an implementation file. Web Services Toolkit and Client Proxy implement the two-file design. In this document, "WSDL document" refers to the combined content of the two files, and "WSDL file" refers to the implementation file.