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Page 1© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Web Service User Interface (WSUI) Language
Dean Moses Chad WilliamsChief Architect Product Manager
WSCM Technical Committee - January, 2002
EPICENTRIC, INC.
Page 2© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
WSUI - Developing a Standard forUser-centered Web Service Interaction
Epicentric WSUI Briefing
Business Drivers
WSUI Overview
Technical Overview
AGENDA
Page 3© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Web Services and Web Development
The Situation: Current web service technologies are
designed for a developer audience and are intended principally for server to server communication
Vendor-specific approaches have emerged to facilitate presentation of web services
In order enable business users to participate in the web service revolution a standard is required to allow directly web services to be embedded into e-business web sites
Page 4© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
XML Web Services
Application to application communication via XML/HTTP protocols (SOAP, XML-RPC, etc.) in order to enable application and data integration.
Pros: Extremely flexible Cons: Custom development necessary, Not possible
for business users to participate in development process
Stock Symbol
Stock Price
Stock Quote ServerWeb App Server
<symbol>MSFT</symbol>
<Price>70 3/4</Price>
Page 5© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Market Pain
Dozens of application delivery platforms Portal servers, app servers, content servers, etc.
Hundreds of application vendors ERP, SCM, SFA, KM, Doc mgmt, etc.
Hundreds of web service vendors / ASPs Hosted email, ERP, content, finance, maps, etc.
Thousands of enterprises doing custom application development Each enterprise has potentially hundreds of
custom apps
…And no standard way to publish applications as XML web services
Page 6© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Displaying Web Services - Portals
All content and application services in the portal are displayed in the form of “embedded components”. Many types of web sites in addition to portals are using component-style display models.
Page 7© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Displaying Web Services – Interaction Flow
Web service presentation may involve multi-stage interactions resulting in different web pages (component containers) and views
Page 8© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
WSUI Proposal
The Solution: Develop a standard for coupling web services with
presentation and interaction information, allowing them to be directly embedded into e-business web sites.
The Technology: A lightweight, easily implementable protocol for adding
presentation and multi-stage interaction to standard SOAP web services by using standard XML technologies such as XSLT
The Result: Business users are enabled to participate in the web
service revolution and benefit from the power of web services.
Page 9© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
An Epi-Centric Timeline
Epicentric Portlet API – early 1999 Mechanism for writing in-process portlets
Epicentric Modular Web Services (MWS) protocol – mid 2000 SOAP-based protocol to enable remote Portlets
to plug into Epicentric portal platformWSUI – mid 2001
Epicentric-led consortium to build on vendor-neutral Web services display format
WSCM – late 2001 IBM, HP, Epicentric, etc. join in vendor-neutral
OASIS TC; standardize WSUI, WSXL concepts IBM & Epicentric collaboration a key driver
Page 10© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Why Did Epicentric Create WSUI?
Web services have no standard mechanism for packaging as end-user facing applications
Proprietary approaches: Don’t enable sharing of applications across
web vendor platforms Increase costs of publishing services to
customers Increase costs of application vendors in
supporting multiple web delivery platforms May be dependant on a single browser
platform
Page 11© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
WSUI – Web Services Presentation Standard
Create multi-stage, interactive applications Publish service on one machine, serve
from another to an end-userDo not change the service interface of
the web service Presentation logic interpreted outside
context of actual service logic on remote machine
Allow service business logic to be published to a delivery platform
Enable publishing of applications to other websites
Page 12© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Application Syndication Real-World Scenarios
Content syndication –news, stocks…ASP applications – email, vertical apps…
Ex: integrate hosted CRM functionality into portal installed internal to enterprise
Application vendor provides a single Web services based interface to its application Plug into multiple web delivery platforms
without writing to proprietary APIsIntra-enterprise application/content
syndication “Publish” an ERP integration web service to
multiple departmental Intranet portals
Page 13© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Travel Web Service Scenario
Travel booking Web Service integrated into 3rd party website
Page 14© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Embedded Services of Travel Scenario
Underlying Web services used by travel booking application Available Flights – check flights Flight View – detail data on one flight Flight Booker – book a particular flight Airport Lookup – flights from airport Airline Lookup – flights from airline Calendar Data – calendar data for booking
All of above potentially can be granular WSDL-described SOAP services published by a travel services aggregator
Page 15© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Multi-View Page Interaction
Page P1
Web Service S1View V1
OK
Search:
Page P2
Web Service S1View V2
Search Results:
1. Q1 Profits
2. Press Release
3. Newsletter
4. Sales Report
5. News article
Page P3
Web Service S1View V3
Press Release
April 14 - Blah blah
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah
Corporate Home Page
Welcome!
WSUI supports the concept of multi-view web service “components” that are
embeddable into “container” pages and support navigation between views in
response to user interactions.
Page 16© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
A web service “component” consists of 4 functional aspects, each of which can be provided by the “component” container or dynamically provided over the Internet by the web service provider: Presentation, user interface, and
navigation User preferences and application state Service data Application Logic
Functional Aspects of Web Service Apps
Page 17© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Using WSUI - Components
The physical assets of a WSUI component are: An XML file that defines the component XSL stylesheets for rendering component
output The XML component definition defines "events".
One event is the initial event to be invoked when a user navigates to the component
Page 18© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Using WSUI - Flow
End user requests a page from a WSUI-aware website. The website runs the initial event of any WSUI component on the page. The event consists of a simple set of actions defined in XML. This action language is oriented towards invoking web services and processing the results. One of the actions is applying a stylesheet to a set of XML fragments to generate the event's display output
User sees the page generated by the WSUI-aware website. Portions of the page were generated by different WSUI components. Part of those portions may be URLs or form actions that invoke other events on the component
Page 19© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Form-Based Request-Response
Page P2
Web Service S1View V2
Search Results:
1. Q1 Profits
2. Press Release
3. Newsletter
Page P1
Web Service S1View V1
OK
Search:
Corporate Home Page
Welcome!
Most interactions (form posts, links, etc.) will result in a standard (non-SOAP) HTTP GET or POST being made to an interaction router implemented within the container web application which will in response craft a SOAP call to the
appropriate web service and construct a result page containing the appropriate web service view :
SOAP Request
SOAP Response
Search EngineWeb Server
<query>MSFT</query>
<result-set> <result> <title>Q1 Profits</title> <link>http://aaa</link> </result> <result> <title>Press Release</title> <link>http://bbb</link> </result> <result> <title>Newsletter</title> <link>http://ccc</link> </result></result-set>
Page 20© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Key Points in Relation to WSCM
Implementable with current standards. Uses existing HTML/WML/other markup language browsers. WSUI can be put into use immediately. This may not be a goal of WSCM.
Simple system. Epicentric constructed a reference implementation in less than a week. This may not be a goal of WSCM.
Focus on Display. Spec contains guidelines for the display of HTML and WML: don't use the <html> and <body> tags, etc. Spec contains a specific set of stylesheet classes that can optionally be used when constructing HTML, to give the output the look and feel of the site it's embedded within.
Focus on multi-view interaction. Defines how a multi-view user interaction happens, but does not define any way for a system to control the user interaction within a single view: i.e., when a user mouses over something, that info isn't sent back to the server.
Page 21© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
WSUI & UDDI Directories
UDDIDirectory
PUBLISH
Portal Installation
Web Service Providers
SEARCH
USE
DISCOVER
INTEGRATE
Page 22© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
Potential Industry Benefits
Single component display standard – app vendors write to one standard to plug into portals WSCM TC is now the vehicle for WSUI
App vendors implement in any language, expose services over HTTP as XML/SOAP
Prevent approaches tied to any one client-side technology
Bring flexibility of Web Services model to user-facing apps
Standardize the display tier of Web Services – currently not addressed
Page 23© 2001, Epicentric - All Rights Reserved
THANK YOU
© 2001 Epicentric Inc. All rights reserved. Epicentric, Epicentric Portal Server and the “e” logo are trademarks of Epicentric Inc. Other products and companies referred to herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies or mark holders.
All materials contained herein are the property of each respective company identified on such materials, and may only be used, copied or distributed with the express written permission of each respective company.
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