Web services response templates

• US 7,702,746 B2
• Filed: 04/21/2005
• Issued: 04/20/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/21/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Conner, Michael Haden, Lane, Eoin
• Primary Examiner(s): Eng; David Y
• Application Number:
  US11/111,505
• Publication Number:
  US 20060242162A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,825 Days
• Field of Search: 709/217, 709/203
• US Class Current: 709/217
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/83 Querying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/20 Software design

Abstract

Provided is a Web Services Response Template (WSRT) that addresses the problems of efficiency and robustness to change in Web Services response by allowing a requestor to explicitly specify, in a response template what information is to be returned by the request. A requestor of a web service gets just the information it needs; different requestors of the same operation may get different information; and a responder sends the requestor only what is asked for so there is no problem when new information becomes available. WSRTs are specifically designed to allow the type of control needed in program-to-program (P2P) communication, while being very efficiently and simply processed by a web service. Thus, WSRTs address difficulties that arise in typical distributed, P2P communication without adding much overhead or complexity to either a service requester or a service provider. The efficiency and flexibility afforded by WSRTs is essential to emerging enterprise architectures based on SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).

Claims

1. A method for transferring data between a client computer and a web service, comprising:

defining a template schema, based upon an information model, wherein the information model characterizes web service data and the web service data is data delivered by the web service;

defining a plurality of request templates, each template of the plurality of template corresponding to a particular subset of the web service data and consistent with the template schema;

selecting a particular request template of the plurality of request templates;

customizing the particular request template based upon specific information requirements of a requestor to generate a customized request template;

collecting the subset of web service data specified in the customized request template;

generating a response template consistent with the template schema and the customized request template, wherein the subset of web service data is incorporated into the response template; and

transmitting the response template, including the incorporated subset of web service data, from the web service to the client computer.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the template schema is expressed in extensible markup language (XML) Schema.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the plurality of request templates and the response template are strongly typed using the XML template schema.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the information model is based upon unified modeling language (UML).

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the template schema is defined using web services description language (WSDL) and the request template and plurality of response templates employ simple object access protocol (SOAP).

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising verifying that a customized request template is from an authorized transmitter.

7. A method for specifying information transfer between a client computer and a web service, comprising:

defining a template schema, based upon an information model, wherein the information model characterizes web service data and the web service data is data delivered by the web service;

customizing a request template based upon specific information requirements of a requestor to generate a customized request template and consistent with the template schema, wherein the request template specifies a subset of the data associated with the web service;

generating the customized request template;

collecting the subset of data specified in the customized request template;

generating a response template consistent with the template schema and the customized request template, wherein the subset of web service data is incorporated into the response template; and

transmitting the response template, including the incorporated subset of web service data, from the web service to the client computer.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the template schema is expressed in extensible markup language (XML) Schema.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the request template and the response template are strongly typed using the XML template schema.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein the information model is based upon unified modeling language (UML).

11. The method claim 7, wherein the template schema is defined using web services description language (WSDL).

12. The method of claim 7, further comprising verifying that the request template is from an authorized transmitter.