WS-Naming: location migration, replication, and failure transparency support for Web Services

Naming transparencies, i.e., abstracting the name and binding of the entity being used from the endpoints that are actually doing the work, are used in distributed systems to simplify application development by hiding the complexity of the environment. In this paper we demonstrate how to apply traditional distributed systems naming and binding techniques in the Web Services realm. Specifically, we show how the WS-Naming profile on WS-Addressing Endpoint References can be used for identity, transparent failover, replication, and migration. We begin with a discussion of the traditional distributed systems transparencies. We then present four detailed use cases. Next, we provide brief background on both WS-Addressing and WS-Naming. Finally, we show how WS-Naming can be used to provide transparent implementations of our use cases.