IFX Forum Publishes Web Services Material for Public Use.

Additional Web Services Deliverables Available for Members Only

WAKEFIELD, Mass. -- Web Services deliverables are now available for download at no charge, the Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forum has announced. The Forum has launched a new section on its public Web site containing a set of standards-based deliverables created by its Web Services Working Group, at http://www.ifxforum.org/standards/standard/. The IFX Forum is a not-for-profit standards organization working to develop a robust framework for the electronic business-to-business exchange of data among financial service institutions around the world.

The newly available public materials consist of a modularized IFX Version 1.7 schema that allows developers to create their own custom elements, including a top-level IFX document containing only those elements that are in use, and a WSDL (Web Services Definition Language).

Additionally, a comprehensive Web Services Implementation Guide and four detailed Reference Implementations are available for access by IFX Forum members only.

The IFX business message specification has been developed as a cooperative industry effort among major financial institutions, service providers, and information technology vendors to yield a single, open financial services industry standard as a platform for creating new financial industry services and software.

Over the course of the past two years, the Forum's Web Services Working Group developed a set of guidelines and standard specifications to allow the transport of IFX documents via Web Services. No changes were made to the Basic Message Service data, although several styles of composing messages are defined in the Web Services Working Group deliverables.

"This work is the result of two years of collaboration among many members of the IFX Forum. We are satisfied that it presents best practices for enabling Web Services to transport IFX messages," said Sid Sidner of ACI Worldwide, who chaired the Web Services Working Group efforts to develop this material. "The goal of this work has not been to define an exhaustive specification, but instead to provide a minimum level of definition so that use of Web Services will not impede the use of IFX."

More about the IFX Web Services Deliverables

WSDLs and Schemas

A WSDL is an interface specification language, much like IDL in CORBA, Java RMI, and Microsoft's COM, expressed as an XML document, very much like an XML schema. A server can define a WSDL document describing a service that the server provides, and the client can then unambiguously generate the messages and message exchange pattern to utilize that service.

The Web Services Working Group selected document/literal as the style of choice, because the Web Services-Interoperability Organization (WS-I) requires it and because there is already a widely used encoding of IFX in XML. Document/literal allows the IFX elements to be embedded in the text body with no further encoding.

The Working Group has defined two scenarios, Document and Message. The Document scenario supports the exchange of existing IFX documents, which is appropriate for existing IFX implementations that want to take advantage of Web Services as a transport. This WSDL is intended as a standard, and there is a WSDL defined for each of the IFX versions.

The Message scenario supports performing each request and response as an individual operation; that is, using individual objects from the IFX schema in Web Service operations. Each action on each object has a separate operation. This WSDL is not intended as a standard. Instead, it is to serve as a guide for the creation of application specific WSDLs by IFX implementers.

Implementation Guide

For Forum members only, the Working Group developed a 70 page Implementation Guide, which includes the following:

* an overview of Web Services concepts and technology,

* specific explanations of the choices made in the design of the IFX WSDL,

* detailed narration of the IFX WSDL for each of the scenarios,

* detailed narration of each of the four reference implementations,

* a list of references,

* a glossary, and

* an appendix of useful Web Service development tools.

This guide is aimed at IFX Web Service implementers who are new to Web Services; who would like to understand the rational for the design of the IFX WSDLs, or who want a companion document to the four reference implementations.

Reference Implementations

Member companies of the Working Group contributed four reference implementations of the Message Scenario, showing four approaches to developing Web Services, using four different technologies. They all implement the same WSDL and support the same client. While not production implementations, these are complete implementations of the DebitCredit WSDL, showing how to use the various SOAP engines. Complete source code is included.

These four implementations are running on an IFX demonstration host, where Forum members can interactively access each one with a Web Service client at a specified service endpoint. The four implementations are:

Microsoft .NET -- constructs a server using Microsoft .NET technology.

Java - Axis - MSG -- constructs a server using the Apache Jakarta AXIS Web Service engine, MSG-style, and JAXB data binding technology from Sun Microsystems.

Java - Axis - RPC -- constructs a server using the Apache Jakarta AXIS Web Service engine, RPC-style, and JAXB data binding technology from Sun Microsystems.

Java - Java Web Services Developer Pack - RPC -- constructs a server using the Sun Microsystems Java Web Services Development Pack (JWSDP).

About the IFX Forum

Membership in the IFX Forum is open to anyone interested in contributing to the development of open financial standards that harness the power of XML. The IFX Forum is currently organized into the following Working Groups: ATM/POS; Branch Banking Services; Business Banking; Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment; and Web Services. IFX Forum Working Groups, in concert with an Architecture Committee to coordinate their efforts, develop open Internet-compatible messages for all sectors of the financial services industry. To learn more about IFX Forum standards or the benefits of IFX Forum membership, please visit www.IFXForum.org.