Client-Side General Architecture 
Purpose
This component provides an overview of the client architecture. It consists of the components below.
These components are similar to the
server side ones, but in most cases they have slightly different
responsibilities.
Features
Client Application
This is the application that needs to use the Web service functionality. It is called the Web service client. It communicates with the Web service using a service endpoint interface, implemented by a generated stub. The client can directly access the protocols through methods of the generated stub class.
Service Endpoint Interface
The service endpoint interface is generated from the WSDL port type. It represents the remote Web service.
Generated Stub
This is an entity that is generated by a concrete transport binding. It implements the service endpoint interface, but contains specific transport binding information.
Proxy Generator
The proxy generator parses a WSDL document and generates the service endpoint interfaces for all port types and schema classes. Afterwards, it processes the WSDL binding elements. For each of them, it identifies the proper transport binding implementation and calls it in order to generate the generated stub.
Transport Binding
The transport binding takes care of generating the stub, and later during runtime, it generates a request message based on the settings generated in the stub. When the response arrives, the transport binding needs to process it and create the Java objects out of it. The transport binding is a pluggable component, and is implemented as a Java service.
Protocol
As on the server side, this is a piece of logic that may do some processing on the message, or some system processing. Like the transport binding, this is a pluggable element that is implemented as a Java service.
Transport
The transport takes the request message and sends it to the target based on the settings in the context. It can add headers or make other configurations to the underlying transport. Then it waits for the response and sends it back. This is also a pluggable component implemented as a Java service.
See also: