What is Web Services Description Language (WSDL)?

WSDL (Web Services Description Language) is an XML-based, platform-independent meta language that can be used to describe the interface definitions of a Web service. WSDL mainly defines the functions of the Web service that are externally accessible, as well as the parameters and return values of these operations. WSDL mainly defines the functions of the Web service that are externally accessible, as well as the parameters and return values of these operations. Furthermore, it describes the communication format in which function calls are sent to Web services. The URL at which a Web service can be called is also specified.

A Web service must be published before the WSDL document describing it can be found, imported, and used. The publication contains detailed information on the location where the descriptive WSDL document was found.

Specifically, a WSDL document contains functional details about:

all information required to access the Web service in machine-readable format.

Web services are characterized by two groups of elements, that is, abstract and concrete definitions.

Web service

Concrete definitions, that is, implementation-specific information such as binding (defines the message format and protocol), port (specifies the address of a communication end point) and service (a collection of ports) are not currently used in the ARIS environment because modeling and Web services used in the models are intended to be platform-independent. Abstract definitions describe the interfaces, their operations and the message types and data types used, regardless of protocol or service.

The following elements represent the abstract definitions in WSDL: