Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF)

This paper proposes a framework that allows the application-programmer to program against an abstract service description, in a protocol-independent manner. We call this framework the Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF). WSIF supplies a simple API to invoke Web Services, no matter how or where the service is provided, so long as the service is described in WSDL. WSIF enables the user to move away from the usual Web Services programming model of working directly with the SOAP APIs, and towards a model where the user interacts with abstract representations of the services. This allows the user to work with the same programming model regardless of how the service is implemented and accessed. The framework also allows new bindings to be dynamically added, and current bindings to be dynamically replaced.