The Entry Protocol step specifies the protocol (JMS, HTTP or HTTPS) in which the virtual service accepts requests. This step allows you to bridge protocols between the consuming application and the native service. For example, let's say that you have a native service that is exposed over JMS and a consuming application that submits SOAP requests over HTTP. In this situation, you can configure the virtual service's Entry Protocol step to accept HTTP requests and configure its Routing Step to route the request to the native service using JMS.

Besides using the Entry Protocol step to resolve protocol differences between the consumer and the native service, you might use this step to intentionally expose a virtual service over a particular protocol. For example, if you have a native service that is exposed over HTTP, you might expose the virtual service over JMS simply to gain the asynchronous-messaging and guaranteed-delivery benefits that one gains by using JMS as the message transport.