A Prototype for Integration of Web Services into the Irules Approach to Component Integration

The Integration Rules (IRules) environment provides a framework for using events and rules in the integration of EJB components. This research has investigated the extensions required to integrate Web Services into the IRules architecture and execution environment. The IRules language framework and metadata have been extended for Web Services, with enhancements to Web Service interfaces for describing services that represent object manipulation operations as well as component enhancements such as event generation, stored attributes, and externalized relationships between distributed components. Web service wrappers provide the additional IRules functionality for the enhanced Web Service interfaces, with a state management facility in the IRules environment providing persistent storage of stored attributes and externalized relationships. The IRules Web service wrappers are client-side, component-independent wrappers for Web Services, thus providing a more dynamic approach to the modification of service interfaces as well as the dynamic entry and exit of participants in the integration process.