Services

A service provides access to specific business functionality.

A service that you create within Server Enterprise Edition can contain one or more operations, depending on the name you give the service and which request handler is associated with it (if any). If you create a service with no request handler associated with it or if the name you use does not contain a valid separator, the service and the operation are one and the same. The Server Enterprise Edition documentation uses the term "simple service" for services of this type. System services such as the Deploy service of the default enterprise server ESDEMO are simple services.

Service names can be of two forms, depending on whether or not the service contains any operations. The two forms are:

• Names consisting of one part, for example, Test or my_service. Simple services have this type of name.
• Names consisting of three parts, for example, http:/tempuri.org/wmapserv#Add. The parts are:
  • The service namespace. This is the part of the name before the first pound (#) character
  • The separator, in this case, the pound (#) character
  • The operation name, in this case Add

  Services with operations have this type of name.

  Service names for Web services use the first pound (#) character as a separator, while names for services that form part of a J2EE application use the last period ( ) character, for example, mybinpservice.operation.

  You can include more than one pound character or period in a service name; Server Enterprise Edition will interpret the first pound character or last period character it finds as the separator.