Chapter 12. Spring Integration and web services
In the previous chapter, we saw Spring Integration’s support for integration through the exchange of files. Although file-based exchanges between systems are still common, enabling two systems to interact through the filesystem can be painful for a number of reasons. Most systems, for example, don’t share a filesystem because they’re likely to be on separate hardware, potentially in different parts of the world. With separate hardware in remote locations, file transfers over the network would have to facilitate this form of communication. Differences in file format and character encoding may create additional challenges.
Using the network directly for message exchange is an appealing alternative. TCP networks offer a ubiquitous transport layer over which calls can be made between systems without many of the downsides of using the filesystem. Because of this capability, web service use has grown to the point where it’s now the default approach for many forms of intersystem communication. This chapter discusses the support offered by Spring Integration for both exposing and consuming web services and the different flavors of web services supported (see figure 12.1).
Figure 12.1. Integration over HTTP is simple because the network exists and HTTP traffic passes relatively easily in and out of enterprise networks.
