What is WSDL?

I would like to introduce you to the concepts of WSDL

1.WSDL => Web service Description Language.
2.Written In XML and validated against XML Schema
3.Used to describe a web service (Equivalent to Java interface definition)
4.Used to locate a web service(uniform resource locator for the web service)

WSDL files includes three set of elements that define a web service

- Import => Optional section that integrates contents from other WSDL file
- Logical(types, message, portType, operation)
- Physical (binding,service,port) which specifies the marshalling format and transport protocol content

Lets delve more into logical/physical elements:

Operations may be message oriented (one-way) or RPC oriented(request-response)
Physical elements: binding, describes how is the data encoded and interpreted?
-service,port describe transport and endpoint location.
Note: transports only send/receive byte streams.

This is just an overview, do check out the next blog on how to create a simple web service.