Web Service Deployment URL

Question

Hello,
I am new to Oracle's OC4J and its Web Services platform, and so please forgive me if this is an absolute no-brainer! However, I have a Web Service which as part the messages it exchanges needs to send its deployment URL (so that others can call back to it at a later time). Is there a specific server-side API call which I can call within my service to find out where my service is deployed, a "where am I?" kind of method?
TIA,
Jim

Answer 1

Normally, the "where am I" information is not available to the Web service implementation itself ... it is simply an implementation that is described by some WSDL. Often the implementation itself does not know that it is a Web service as it could be an EJB, Java class, JMS queue or database stored procedure.
So, that said, in the WSDL describing the service there is the soap:address section that shows where the service itself is located:
<service name="StatefulExampleImpl">
<port name="StatefulExampleImplPort" binding="tns:StatefulExampleImplBinding">
<soap:address location="http://127.0.0.1:8888/ws-root/StatefulExampleImpl"/>
</port>
</service>
In the Oracle Web services implementation there is the ability for client applications to inquire at the endpoint for the WSDL for a Web service. So for example, in the above Web service, the endpoint is at http://127.0.0.1:8888/ws-root/StatefulExampleImpl and I can inquire for the WSDL by using the following URL:
http://127.0.0.1:8888/ws-root/StatefulExampleImpl?WSDL
I realize this is a chicken and egg answer ... i.e. where did the endpoint come from! I suppose the endpoint can be programmatically determined from the web.xml configuration of the Web service servlet (look at the web.xml for a Web service either generated by JDev or the Web Services Assembler command line tool) but because you don't write the Web service servlet itself (you write the implementation that the servlet invokes), this probably doesn't help.
The other way to discover a Web service endpoint is through UDDI where you look up the business name/function and it points to the WSDL which in turn points to the endpoint. An example of dynamic discovery using UDDI on an Oracle platform is available at:
http://otn.oracle.com/sample_code/tech/java/web_services/wsdinvoke/WebServiceDII.jar
An alternative here though not broadly implemented or accepted standard is WSIL spec from IBM ... see:
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2002/10/16/wsil.html
Not sure if this helps but perhaps it might help.
Mike.