What's under the hood?

To understand isCOBOL for Axis2 and what it does, you must have a good idea of the life cycle of a Web services message. Typically, it looks something like this:

The sending application creates the original SOAP message, an XML message that consists of headers and a body. If the system requires the use of WS* recommendations such as WS-Addressing or WS-Security, the message may undergo additional processing before it leaves the sender. Once the message itself is ready, it is sent via a particular transport such as HTTP, JMS, and so on.

The message works its way over to the receiver, which takes in the message via the transport listener. (In other words, if the application doesn't have an HTTP listener running, it's not going to receive any HTTP messages.) Again, if the message is part of a system that requires the use of WS-Security or other recommendations, it may need additional processing for the purpose of checking credentials or decrypting sensitive information. Finally, a dispatcher determines the specific application (or other component, such as a isCOBOL method) for which the message was intended, and sends it to that component. That component is part of an overall application designed to work with the data being sent back and forth.