Service Interfaces 

Definition

This section provides information for the general tasks of the SI, as well as the differences between the JAX-RPC 1.0 Service Interface and the SAP Web AS Service Interfaces.

The term Service Interface is derived mainly from the JAX-RPC 1.0 specification.

Use

The SI acts as a factory for obtaining logical ports. A client must obtain an SI instance to access a Web service. This is done either with a lookup in the JNDI, in the case of deployable proxies (invoked from an enterprise bean, servlet, or JavaServer pages) or by instantiating the implementation of the SI in standalone proxies.

The differences between the SAP SI and the JAX-RPC SI are as follows:

·        In SAP Web AS, a logical port is defined. Generally, this is an abstraction over a WSDL port but provides the option of configuring features, properties, and other additional settings before a call has been made.

·        In JAX-RPC the user can access only the ports defined in the WSDL, while in the SAP SI the full capability of the logical port concept is provided.

Obtaining a SI depends on whether a deployable or standalone instance is used. For more information, see also Deployable versus Standalone Proxies.