WebService TitBits - 4

A service groups a set of related ports together:

< wsdl : definitions .... >
    < wsdl :  service name="nmtoken " > *
        < wsdl : port .... / > * 
    < / wsdl : service >
< / wsdl : definitions >

The name attribute provides a unique name among all services defined within in the enclosing WSDL document.

Ports within a service have the following relationship:

• None of the ports communicate with each other (e.g. the output of one port is not the input of another).
• If a service has several ports that share a port type, but employ different bindings or addresses, the ports are alternatives. Each port provides semantically equivalent behavior (within the transport and message format limitations imposed by each binding). This allows a consumer of a WSDL document to choose particular port(s) to communicate with based on some criteria (protocol, distance, etc.).
• By examining it's ports, we can determine a service's port types. This allows a consumer of a WSDL document to determine if it wishes to communicate to a particular service based whether or not it supports several port types. This is useful if there is some implied relationship between the operations of the port types, and that the entire set of port types must be present in order to accomplish a particular task.