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Web Services Description Language

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Also known as WSDL

XML-based interface description language

Key facts

Filename extension
.wsdl
Internet media type
application/wsdl+xml
Developed by
World Wide Web Consortium
Contained by
XML
Standard
2.0 Recommendation

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image
WSDL.svg
Show 7 more facts
Stack Exchange tag
stackoverflow.com/tags/wsdl
file extension
wsdl
media type
application/wsdl+xml
XML namespace URL
www.w3.org/ns/wsdl
short name
WSDL
ACM Classification Code (2012)
10003307
Sources (3)

via Wikidata · CC0

~7 min read

Encyclopedic overview

The Web Services Description Language (WSDL /ˈwɪz dəl/) is an XML-based interface description language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a web service. The acronym is also used for any specific WSDL description of a web service (also referred to as a WSDL file), which provides a machine-readable description of how the service can be called, what parameters it expects, and what data structures it returns. Therefore, its purpose is roughly like a type signature in a programming language.

The latest version of WSDL, which became a W3C recommendation in 2007, is WSDL 2.0. The meaning of the acronym has changed from version 1.1 where the "D" stood for "Definition".

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Web Services Description Language” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.