An overview of WSIF

WSIF provides a Java API for invoking Web services, independent of the format of the service or the transport protocol through which it is invoked. It addresses all of the issues identified in the goals of WSIF.

WSIF provides these features:

• It has an API that provides binding-independent access to any Web service.
• It is closely based on WSDL, so it can invoke any service that can be described in WSDL.
• It allows stubless (completely dynamic) invocation of a Web service.
• You can plug a new or updated implementation of a binding into WSIF at run time.
• You can defer the choice of a binding until run time.

WSIF is designed to work both in an unmanaged environment (standalone) and inside a managed container. You can use JNDI to find the WSIF service, or else read in the WSDL definition.

For more conceptual information about WSIF and WSDL, see these topics:

WSIF and WSDL
This topic compares the semantics of Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and WSIF.

WSIF architecture
This topic describes the WSIF architecture.

Using WSIF with Web services that offer multiple bindings
This topic describes how to use WSIF with Web Services with multiple bindings.

WSIF usage scenarios
This topic describes two brief scenarios that illustrate the role that Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF) plays in the emerging Web services environment.

Dynamic invocation
This topic describes dynamic invocation of WSIF.