Prototyping Service Oriented Architectures based on web services can be complex and time consuming. To create a web service, it is often necessary to define services in wsdl, create the service file, setup an application server, and deploy the service. Also, classes supporting marshaling for individual types and operations must be generated. Therefore, it is desirable to be able to create prototypes using more familiar constructs, entirely within a single programming language, and then define some of the components as web services, and others as clients.

The paper present a framework based on ArchJava which allows for the easy creation of web services and clients, by defining the interface of the web service as an ArchJava port. Furthermore, ArchJava enforces communication integrity along connectors, ensuring that the prototype follows the correct communication flow. This supports the easy creation of prototypes by allowing to define the component and connector structure of web service based systems in ArchJava, and then later, with only minor modifications, change the prototype to use web services. The services will not be aware that they are web services, and the clients will not be aware that they are talking to web services. From their point of view, they are talking through ArchJava connectors. This also allows for connecting to existing web services through the same connector.

Members can download the paper here.