IX Web Services
The IX Workflow Architecture provides web service definitions for the implementation of a service based workflow system. These types of workflow systems are for instance applicable to be integrated in a service orientied architecture (SOA). The IX Web Services supply different methods to cover all essential functions of a workflow management system. These web services can individually be extended by the open IX Workflow API and be customised to the demands of different platforms.
There are two types of web service definitions to meet the requests from the variable areas of a workflow architecture.
- IX WorkflowManagerService
this service provides different methods to start and process workflow instances and also manage collections of running instances. A good example using this service in a simple way is the IX Ajax Framework.
- IX WorkflowModelService
this service provides functions to find and manage the definition of a workflowmodel. For instance the IX Workflow Modeler makes use of this service.
Specification & Implementation
The web services definitions are specified by wsdl files. The Web Service Description Language (WSDL) is a standard definition language to describe web service interfaces and ensure the interoperability of a web service. For a flexible data exchange there also exists a XML Schema which describes the data objects supported by the IX Web Service interfaces.
The implementations are based on standard and service suppliers specifications. The IX JEE Workflow includes a standard compliant implementation of these web service definitions. But there are a lot of other kinds of service implementation for comercial products.
