page 1 © 2001, epicentric - all rights reserved web service user interface (wsui) language dean...

© 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.


WSUI - Developing a Standard forUser-centered Web Service Interaction

Epicentric WSUI Briefing

Business Drivers

WSUI Overview

Technical Overview

AGENDA


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


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>


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


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.


Displaying Web Services – Interaction Flow

Web service presentation may involve multi-stage interactions resulting in different web pages (component containers) and views


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.


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


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


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


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


Travel Web Service Scenario

Travel booking Web Service integrated into 3rd party website


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


Multi-View Page Interaction

Page P1

Web Service S1View V1

OK

Search:

Page P2


Search Results:

1. Q1 Profits

2. Press Release

3. Newsletter

4. Sales Report

5. News article

Page P3


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.


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


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


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


Form-Based Request-Response

Page P2


Search Results:

1. Q1 Profits

2. Press Release

3. Newsletter

Page P1


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>


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.


WSUI & UDDI Directories

UDDIDirectory

PUBLISH

Portal Installation

Web Service Providers

SEARCH

USE

DISCOVER

INTEGRATE


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


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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