What is use of WS Addressing?

[Harsha kumar Reddy]

 I went through the tutorial about WS-adderssing and it is not clear the actual use of it . It has been stated that WS addressing helps client to address back to the service . But client would have used the address of the service endpoint to call a method in it  in first place, So the client would have already known the address of service endpoint . So what is use of ws addressing .
And it has been stated that WS-addressing is used to address the service in transport neutral way . But  the  @Addressing  annotation is only useful in SOAP 1.1/ HTTP  and SOAP 1.2/ HTTP  binding . Here URL used by HTTP is also transport neutral ?.

[Theo van Kraay]

Hi there. I know this question was posted a while ago but will add my response. I think the key bit of information in the standard is here:

"Web Services Addressing (WS-Addressing) defines two interoperable constructs that convey information that is typically provided by transport protocols and messaging systems. These constructs normalize this underlying information into a uniform format that can be processed independently of transport or application. The two constructs are endpoint references and message information headers."

However, I understand why this might still seem a bit nebulous. To illustrate, one common implementation of the standard (and one I have used) is in the development of asynchronous "call back" web services. This is kind of analogous to the pub/sub model in JMS. If you have used queues and JMS, you might be able to see the pattern; caller provides a message ID and request URI information (the latter is then used more for message auditing, and/or routing), and also provides a "replyTo" endpoint where the asynchronous response message can be submitted (and handled by the original caller). The URI information from the caller may be important, for example, because it might not actually be the endpoint of the responding service, but of a mediator that has handled the routing. Bear in mind that SOAP is not just a messaging protocol; a number of the SOAP standards have to do with wider SOA goals around loose coupling, service mediation, routing and orchestration. This is in part what is meant by "transport neutral"; SOAP is trying to provide a technology agnostic and transport neutral mechanism in a Service-oriented architecture (which is why SOAP is sometimes called the "language of SOA", though RESTful/JSON web services can also meet those goals).

I don't know if my description was the best but I hope it makes some kind of sense.

[Uwe Lindenberg]

Hello,

I have got a question concerning WebService Adressing. Without WS-Adressing we do it this way:

// WebServicePart
package service.kap_14_Use_WS_Addressing_with_a_SOAP_web_service;
@WebService
public interface GeU_SEI_01_WSA {
public String machWas(String wert);
}
@WebService(endpointInterface = "service.kap_14_Use_WS_Addressing_with_a_SOAP_web_service.GeU_SEI_01_WSA")
public class GeU_SIB_01_WSA implements GeU_SEI_01_WSA {
@Override
public String machWas(String wert) {
return "Hallo " + wert;
}
}

If we want to use it in a client we do it this way:

....
String url = "http://localhost:8080/warFileName"/ + GeU_SIB_01_WSA.class.getSimpleName();
URL wsdlDocumentLocation = new URL(url + "?wsdl");
QName serviceName = new QName("http://kap_14_Use_WS_Addressing_with_a_SOAP_web_service.service/","GeU_SIB_01_WSAService");
Service service = Service.create(wsdlDocumentLocation, serviceName);
GeU_SEI_01_WSA geU_SEI_01_WSA = service.getPort(GeU_SEI_01_WSA.class);
String ret = geU_SEI_01_WSA.machWas("WS-Call");
...

This is what I understand. After annotating @Addressing in GeU_SIB_01_WSA and changing the client to
...
GeU_SEI_01_WSA geU_SEI_01_WSA = service.getPort(GeU_SEI_01_WSA.class, new AddressingFeature(true));
..
the SOAPMessages and the wsdl have changed. MessageID, RelatesTo, ReplyTo, FaultTo etc. are included. The client can be used as well. This is what I understand also.

The question now is:
What is an example (a concrete code snippet), where this things a really needed. When googling I only find theoretical aspects, but no code snippet.
Something like: client calls webservice in request, webservice executes a while and then something magic reacts to the webservices response.

Thanks in advance,

Uwe