The WSA is where you deploy a SOAP Web service that you want to make available to clients. Once deployed, it also allows you to manage the SOAP Web service individually and as part of a group of SOAP Web services. This includes such options as making SOAP Web service definitions available to potential clients as downloadable Web Services Description Language (WSDL) files and making one or more SOAP Web services available as applications for access by clients.
To initially create SOAP Web service definitions, you use ProxyGen to define an existing set of AppServer procedures and functions in terms of SOAP Web service objects. ProxyGen generates a Web Service Mapping (WSM) file. This WSM file stores the SOAP Web service object definitions in a form similar to a WSDL file, but without the final deployment information targeted to a specific WSA installation.
Thus, when you deploy a SOAP Web service to a WSA, you specify the information including the WSM file into a WSDL file that a specific WSA can use to provide the SOAP Web service definition to Web service clients. This same process also creates a Web Service Application Descriptor (WSAD) file that provides the SOAP Web service definition to a specific WSA in a form that allows it to host the deployed SOAP Web service and manage its run-time behavior.
