IFX Web Services

Background

The IFX business message specification was developed as a cooperative industry effort between major Financial Institutions, Service Providers, and information technology partners to achieve a single, open financial services industry standard. It provides a comprehensive message set for developing new financial industry services and software. The Web Services Working Group has developed a set of guidelines and standard specifications to allow the transport of IFX documents using Web Services as a transport. No change is made to the Basic Message Service data, although several styles of composing messages are defined. This work is the result of 18 months of collaboration by many members of the IFX Forum. We believe it presents best practices that allow the use of Web Services to transport IFX messages. The goal of this work has not been to define an exhaustive specification, but instead to provide a minimum level of definition to enable the Web Services to not impede the use of IFX. [ Top ]
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Downloading the WSDLs, Schemas, Implementation Guide and Reference Implementations

The WSDLs and Schemas are available to the public at no charge, although you will be asked for your email address.
Download WSDL and Schema

The Implementation Guide and source code to the Reference Implementations are available to IFX members at no charge in the Members Only area. If you are not an IFX member, you may wish to consider joining the IFX Forum. The sample code of the reference implementations is provided on an "as is" basis by the IFX Forum and the contributing member companies, without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, without limitation, warranties that the original code is free of defects, merchantable, fit for a particular purpose or non-infringing. The IFX forum and its member companies are not liable for anything resulting in the use of this sample code. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the sample code is with the user. No use of any of the sample code provided is authorized except under this disclaimer.

Membership Information Member Application (PDF) [ Top ]
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WSDLs and Schemas

WSDL is an interface specification language, much like IDL in CORBA, Java RMI, and Microsoft’s COM. WSDL is 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 unambiguously generate the messages and message exchange pattern to utilize that service.

The Working Group has selected document/literal as the style of choice, because WS-I requires it. This is a good style for IFX because there is already a widely used encoding of IFX in XML. Document/literal allows the IFX elements to be embedded in the body with no further encoding.

The Working Group has defined two scenarios, Document and Message.

Document Scenario
This scenario supports the exchange of existing IFX documents. This is appropriate for existing IFX implementations that want to take advantage of Web Services as a transport.

Only one operation is defined, DoIFX.

This WSDL is intended as a standard. There is a WSDL defined for each of the IFX versions.

Message Scenario
This scenario supports performing each request and response as an individual operation. This demonstrates using individual objects from the IFX schema in Web Service operations.

Each action on each object has a separate operation. For example, for the Add action of the Credit object, there is an operation, DoCreditAdd.

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.

Download
The WSDLs and Schemas are available to the public at no charge, although you will be asked for your email address. Download WSDL and Schemas [ Top ]

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Implementation Guide

The Working Group has developed a 68 page Implementation Guide to assist implementers. This Guide includes the following:

• an overview of Web Services concepts and technology,
• specific explanation 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.

Click here to view a complete table of contents.

This guide is aimed at IFX Web Service implementers who are new to Web Services or who would like to understand the rational for the design of the IFX WSDLs, or a companion to the four reference implementations listed below. There are extensive sections that narrate and explain each of the reference implementations. [ Top ]

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Reference Implementations

Members of the Working Group contributed four reference implementations of the Message Scenario. These demonstrate 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 executing on an IFX demonstration host. You can interactively access each of these with a Web Service client at the specified service endpoints below. Also, there are pages that demonstrates submitting a sample request to the services. Click here for Microsoft .NET and here for Java.

Microsoft .NET
This implementation constructs a server using Microsoft .NET technology. This was developed by Wolf Rossmann, NCR Corporation. http://67.15.113.6/$sitepreview/sidner.org/DebitCredit200504.asmx

Java – Axis – MSG
This implementation constructs a server using the Apache Jakarta AXIS Web Service engine, MSG-style, and JAXB data binding technology from Sun Microsystems. This was developed by Quansheng Jia, Fidelity Information Systems. http://bms.ifxforum.org/AxisMSG/services/IFX

Java – Axis – RPC
This implementation constructs a server using the Apache Jakarta AXIS Web Service engine, RPC-style, and JAXB data binding technology from Sun Microsystems. This was developed by Sid Sidner, ACI Worldwide. http://bms.ifxforum.org/AxisRPC/services/DebitCreditSoapBindingPort200504

Java – Java Web Services Developer Pack – RPC
This implementation constructs a server using the Sun Microsystems Java Web Services Development Pack (JWSDP). This was developed by Rima Patel Sriganesh, Sun Microsystems. http://bms.ifxforum.org/JWSDP/ifx-jwsdp16

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Standards

The IFX Web Services specifications incorporate the following standards:

• WS-I - http://www.ws-i.org/
• WS-I: Basic Profile 1.1 - http://www.ws-i.org/Profiles/BasicProfile-1.1.html
• WS-I: Simple SOAP Binding Profile 1.0 - http://www.ws-i.org/Profiles/SimpleSoapBindingProfile-1.0.html
• SOAP 1.1 - http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/NOTE-SOAP-20000508
• WSDL 1.1 - http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/NOTE-wsdl-20010315 [ Top ]

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Feedback

The Web Services Working Group actively solicits your input in the following areas:

• Bugs - Please report any that you find.
• Design - Please send any comments or suggestions on the design. We will use your input in the next round of development, as part of the IFX 2.0 development effort.
• Support - Having trouble getting it to work? Got a question about why something was done the way it was done? We will provide as much help as we can. Please write us at WSWG@ifxforum.org. This address is monitored by members of the Working Group and we will try to respond to you as quickly as possible. [ Top ]