Requirements for Describing Web Services
It is possible to implement Web services in a variety of ways. For example, to send a message correctly, you need to know the following:
The IP address and other endpoint information If using HTTP, the SOAPAction The allowable set of messages (called operations) that the service supports The schema (and possibly the SOAPAction) for the request message of each operation The response schema to expect if there is a response Any possible headers that may be expected in the request or response, and the schema for those Whether or not each operation is defined according to the rules of SOAP Section 5 Other metadata that would be helpful, although not strictly required to send a correctly formatted message, such as inheritance chains and business processing rules
As you can imagine, this is a lot to communicate to a colleague with whom you are trying to build a Web service. There have been several attempts to capture this information in an easily parsed (read: XML) manner. The most popular description format is the Web Services Description Language (WSDL).
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