B.5 portType Element

A portType element composes messages into operations. An operation describes a pattern of interaction between a client and a server. A portType may contain any number of operation elements. Each operation may contain an input message, an output message, and a fault message. An input message is a message from a client to the server. An output message is a message from the server to the client. A fault message is a message that is used to report an error. The order of the input and output elements is the order in which those messages occur within the operation. The sample below shows the basic outline of a portType element:

<portType name="PortName">
  <operation name="OperationName">
    <input message="InputMessageRef"/>
    <output message="OutputMessageRef"/>
    <fault message="FaultMessageRef"/>
  </operation>
</portType>

The PortName sets the name of the port. The OperationName sets the name of the operation. The InputMessageRef, OutputMessageRef and FaultMessageRef each refer to a message defined elsewhere in the WSDL file. These references must be namespace qualified if the targetNamespace for the WSDL definitions element is not the same as the default namespace.

The sample below shows the portType element defined in WeatherSummary.wsdl:

  <portType name="WeatherSummary">
    <operation name="getSummary">
      <input message="tns:getSummary"/>
      <output message="tns:getSummaryResponse"/>
    </operation>
  </portType>

The portType element describes an operation named getSummary. The operation consists of two messages. A client sends the message getSummary to the server. The server responds with the message getSummaryResponse. Because the input message is before the output message, the client initiates this operation. This type of operation is a request-response operation. Since neither message is defined in the WSDL namespace, the names of both messages are namespace qualified.

Although a portType element describes a communication pattern, the element does not specify a communication protocol.

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