Imixs Workflow ...the open source workflow technology for business applications

RESTful API

The Imixs SOAP Service

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architecture principally based upon service-oriented applications that can be implemented with different technologies such as web services. They provide an a loosely coupled interface using XML. Web service standards specify that the interface to which a message is sent should define the format of the message request and response, and mechanisms to publish and to discover web service interfaces.

SOAP

SOAP is the standard web service application protocol. It provides the communication mechanism to connect web services exchanging formatted XML data across the network protocol, commonly HTTP. SOAP relies on XML because a SOAP message is an XML document containing several elements like an envelop, a header and a body.

JAX-WS

The Imixs SOAP Web services are based on JAX-WS (JSR 224). JAX-WS defines a set of APPPIs and annotations that allow to build and consume web services with Java. JAX-WS is part of the JEE specification and provides the consumer and service facilities to send and receive web service requests via SOAP, masking the complexity of the protocol. The JAX-WS depends on the Java Architecture for XML binding (JAXB) so the Imixs SOAP services are using the Imixs-XML API.

The Implementation

The Imixs SOAP web services are implemented in three different components. The Components are annotated with the @WebService annotation and wrapping the Service methods of the Imxis Workflow services.

  • ModelWebService - provides the business logic of the Imixs Model Service
  • WorkflowWebService - provides the business logic of the Imixs Workflow Service
  • ReportWebService - provides the business logic of the Imixs Report Service