Implementing Web Services

Web services enable applications to interact with one another over the Web in a platform-neutral, language independent environment. In a typical Web services scenario, a business application sends a request to a service at a given URL by using the protocol over HTTP. The service receives the request, processes it, and returns a response. You can incorporate calls with external Web services in applications developed in Application Builder.

Web services are based on Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). SOAP is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard protocol for sending and receiving requests and responses across the Internet. SOAP messages can be sent back and forth between a service provider and a service user in SOAP envelopes.

SOAP offers two primary advantages:

SOAP is based on XML, and therefore easy to use.
SOAP messages are not blocked by firewalls because this protocol uses simple transport protocols, such as HTTP.

Tip:

If you are running Oracle Application Express with Oracle Database 11g Release 1 (11.1), you must enable network services in order to use Web services. See "Enabling Network Services in Oracle Database 11g"

Topics:

Note:

The SOAP 1.1 specification is a W3C note. (The W3C XML Protocol Working Group has been formed to create a standard that will supersede SOAP.)

For information about Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.1 see:

http://www.w3.org/TR/SOAP/