This presentation will focus on the technical issues related to using XSLT with Web Services. We will introduce the concept of Web Services and describe the XML technologies that make up the standards for Web Services (SOAP, XML-RPC, WSDL). We will look at XSLT and its proper place in a Web Service developer's toolset. We will examine how XSLT can be applied as a testing and prototyping tool for SOAP endpoints. XSLT can also be used to manipulate WSDL. We will show how WSDL files provide metadata about Web Services that XSLT can use to generate HTML help or client scripts.

We will explore the limits of XSLT as a solution for Web Services. XSLT can only do so much for developers working in C++, Java, or other languages. If we write our Web Service code in XML, however, there are really no limits to what XSLT can do. XSLT can transform our service code into WSDL, HTML help, or even another XSLT document to process requests. We will introduce a framework written in XSLT that can serve as a Web Services toolkit for XSLT developers. Using this framework, we will be able to develop and deploy Web Services written entirely in XSLT, or leverage the abilities of the XSLT processors to write Web Services in script code.