Chapter 6 

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Developers who use the Web service approach for integration can leverage the

advantages of Web services. Developers can write new enterprise applications

with any technology that supports Web services, and the applications may be run

on a variety of hardware and software platforms. However, this approach falls

short when the new applications have certain additional requirements, such as

transactional semantics or stringent security requirements. We discuss how to

handle these issues in subsequent sections. 

The adventure builder application is a good example of the Web services

approach. As noted, the adventure builder enterprise uses Web services for inte 

grating its supply chain. (Chapter 8 discuss the exact structure of the application,

but here we highlight those details that pertain to integration.) The adventure

builder architects decide, in consultation with the suppliers, on the schemas for the

documents that they intend to exchange. (See  Designing Domain Specific XML

Schemas  on page 131.) Since their business depends on this exchange of docu 

ments the adventure builder application sends purchase orders to various suppli 

ers who fulfill adventure requests, and, in turn, the suppliers invoice adventure

builder the adventure builder enterprise and the suppliers need to agree on

schemas that describe the content of these documents. For example, a lodging

supplier might use an invoice document schema. Code Example 6.1 shows an

example document corresponding to that schema. Similar schemas are defined for

other kinds of suppliers, such as activity and airline suppliers.