An opaque representation of an application endpoint. Typically, an
Endpoint object represents a business entity, but it
may represent a party of any sort. Conceptually, an
Endpoint object is the mapping of a logical name
(example, a URI) to a physical location, such as a URL.
For messaging using a provider that supports profiles, an application
does not need to specify an endpoint when it sends a message because
destination information will be contained in the profile-specific header.
However, for point-to-point plain SOAP messaging, an application must supply
an Endpoint object to
the SOAPConnection method call
to indicate the intended destination for the message.
The subclass {@link URLEndpoint URLEndpoint} can be used when an application
wants to send a message directly to a remote party without using a
messaging provider.
The default identification for an Endpoint object
is a URI. This defines what JAXM messaging
providers need to support at minimum for identification of
destinations. A messaging provider
needs to be configured using a deployment-specific mechanism with
mappings from an endpoint to the physical details of that endpoint.
Endpoint objects can be created using the constructor, or
they can be looked up in a naming
service. The latter is more flexible because logical identifiers
or even other naming schemes (such as DUNS numbers)
can be bound and rebound to specific URIs. |
