Wizard API updated!
Tim Boudreau has released a new version of the Swing Wizard library (version 0.997) that fixes the WizardException bug reported in JavaWorld's recent Open Source Java Project profile. The article's examples have been reworked to test out the new, improved WizardException. Thanks, Tim, for this helpful fix!
Open Source Java Projects: The Wizard API

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Use Web services to integrate Web applications with EISs

Web services: A team player in the enterprise-information-system integration game

By Jeff Hanson, JavaWorld.com, 02/08/02

Enterprise application integration; enterprise systems integration; legacy data access: thoughts that make most of us cringe. Until now, these terms have meant long hours of frustration, sleepless nights, and hair loss. Fear no more: help has arrived, or at least that is what we are being told in the development community. Web services technology has promised to solve your enterprise integration problems and then some. At this point, it's hard to tell whether Web services are just a fad, but Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and many others seem to be staking their reputations on the future of Web services. Let's take a look at how the Java community and Microsoft are trying to make this promise more than just hype.

Introducing Web services

Web services is the term currently used to describe the concepts and technologies that integrate business processes and services over the Web using standard network protocols. Web services, as a technology, is a mechanism for delivering services and business content to any Web-enabled client or device.

Web services are URL-addressable resources that share a common protocol, allowing applications and services to connect to them over the Internet. Web services are based on XML and are communicated over existing HTTP infrastructures. The Web services model lets you combine unrelated applications and services dynamically in a loosely coupled manner over a networked environment.

Until recently, the Internet has mainly focused on interaction between Web browsers and data stores. Any integration with a middle-tier or legacy business system involved a lot of expensive, proprietary coding from several different teams of integration engineers. The Web services model promises to solve this problem by providing the following:

  • A standard, uniform way to represent and transfer data
  • A common, extensible message-processing format
  • A common service description language
  • A way to locate services


The current language used to describe Web services is the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Web services are published in a registry using Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI), and invoked over HTTP using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). A WSDL file is an XML document that defines a Web service and acts as a programming contract by separating a service's interface from its implementation. A WSDL file provides abstract and concrete definitions for a Web service's requests and responses, as well as the schemas needed to create the request documents and response documents.

XML is ubiquitous throughout the Web services architecture. Even though you can implement Web services in any programming language and deploy them on any network-accessible platform, you must use XML as the data transfer mechanism.

XML is quickly becoming the standard for information transfer and business interchange. According to many experts, XML should also replace EDI (electronic data interchange) systems as the main means of communication and data transfer between businesses. This ubiquitous XML support makes Web services the primary player in the enterprise information system (EIS) integration game.

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