Adapting single-request/multiple-response messaging to Web services

Abstract

In this paper, we will focus on providing a solution to using the message exchange pattern, single-request/multiple-response (SRMR) in the context of Web services and secured enterprise environments. SRMR messaging is important because it can be used to model real world problems elegantly. However, SRMR messaging is not directly supported by Web services, and is hampered by current in-practice security schemes, such as firewalls and proxy servers. We have proposed a client-side framework to utilize SRMR Web services with the realities of network security in mind. The central component of our framework is a Web service clearinghouse, which serves as both a communication proxy and a message manager that realizes the correlation between clients' calls and the services' responses. Using our framework and the code generation utilities, we have implemented a number of nontrivial systems that use SRMR Web services.