Why WSDL is not Yet Another Object IDL

Abstract

There has been much debate lately on what exactly WSDL’s purpose is, and much of that debate has focussed on whether or not WSDL is an interface definition language (IDL), or whether WSDL is better used to specify message-level contracts (without any associated operational semantics). In this article we present an argument that dealing with WSDL as a message-level contract description language is the right way to go for building loosely coupled Web Services.