WSDL, SOAP Messages, and Proxy Code
The Groove Web Services interfaces are formally defined by Web Services Description Language (WSDL) files. The Groove Web Services WSDL files and their associated XML Schema Description (XSD) files are provided in the Groove Software Developers Kit (SDK). Typically, developers use Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 to generate proxy code from the WSDL files. The proxy code defines function prototypes that provide access to the Groove Web Services.
The WSDL and XSD files are the formal definitions for Web Services interfaces. They define the structure of the XML SOAP messages that the SOAP client sends to the Web Service and the Web Service responds to the client. Although SOAP clients can generate and read the SOAP messages directly, typically, there is intermediate proxy code that converts between structures in the programming language and SOAP messages. In many development environments, this proxy code can be automatically generated from the WSDL definition. The application programmer develops code using the proxy code API and conversion to and from SOAP is performed by the proxy code.
The Groove Web Services implementation accepts only SOAP requests that are coded with the UTF-8 character set. If you send a SOAP request with any other encoding, Groove will return a SOAP exception.