Generating a WSDL from an XSD file

Question

I need to generate a WSDL file given an XSD file  How do I do this  Can I do this in VS2005  What is the simplest way to do this

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I know this question is old  but it deserves an answer  I personally prefer to create a WSDL by hand and test for compliance using SoapUI  But sometimes  specially for complex WSDLs   you have three ways to generate one out of an XSD    Generating a WSDL from a schema using Eclipse  probably the most user-friendly  Generating a WSDL via CXF  my favorite  Generating a WSDL via conventions using Spring WS  my least favorite    I prefer the CXF approach since I m a CLI guy  If it has a CLI  you can automate  that s my motto   And I like the Spring WS approach the least since it uses a lot of framework specific conventions    There are more people who know CXF  I believe  than Spring WS  So anything that can throw a learning curve for a new engineer  without any clear advantage or ROI  is something I frown upon   It should also go w o saying that any generated WSDL should be tested for validity and compliance  and tweaked till it complies   and that your application publishes a static wsdl  as opposed to returning an auto-generated one    It s been my experience that you start with a WS-I compliant wsdl and then your application auto-generates  and returns to consumers  a non-compliant one    In other words  beware of auto magic

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This tool xsd2wsdl part of the Apache CXF project which will generate a minimalist WSDL

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You cannot - a XSD describes the DATA aspects e g  of a webservice - the WSDL describes the FUNCTIONS of the web services  method calls   You cannot typically figure out the method calls from your data alone   These are really two separate  distinctive parts of the equation  For simplicity s sake you would often import your XSD definitions into the WSDL in the  lt wsdl types gt  tag    thanks to Cheeso for pointing out my inaccurate usage of terms

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I d like to differ with marc s on this  who wrote       a XSD describes the DATA aspects e g    of a webservice - the WSDL describes   the FUNCTIONS of the web services    method calls   You cannot typically   figure out the method calls from your   data alone    WSDL does not describe functions   WSDL defines a network interface  which itself is comprised of endpoints that get messages and then sometimes reply with messages  WSDL describes the endpoints  and the request and reply messages  It is very much message oriented   We often think of WSDL as a set of functions  but this is because the web services tools typically generate client-side proxies that expose the WSDL operations as methods or function calls   But the WSDL does not require this   This is a side effect of the tools   EDIT  Also  in the general case  XSD does not define data aspects of a web service   XSD defines the elements that may be present in a compliant XML document  Such a document may be exchanged as a message over a web service endpoint  but it need not be      Getting back to the question I would answer the original question a little differently   I woudl say YES  it is possible  to generate a WSDL file given a xsd file   in the same way it is possible to generate an omelette using eggs    EDIT  My original response has been unclear  Let me try again   I do not suggest that XSD is equivalent to WSDL  nor that an XSD is sufficient to produce a WSDL   I do say that it is possible to generate a WSDL  given an XSD file  if by that phrase you mean  to generate a WSDL using an XSD file    Doing so  you will augment the information in the XSD file to generate the WSDL   You will need to define additional things - message parts  operations  port types - none of these are present in the XSD   But it is possible to  generate a WSDL  given an XSD   with some creative effort    If the phrase  generate a WSDL given an XSD  is taken to imply  mechanically transform an XSD into a WSDL   then the answer is NO  you cannot do that   This much should be clear given my description of the WSDL above    When generating a WSDL using an XSD file  you will typically do something like this  note the creative steps in this procedure     import the XML schema into the WSDL  wsdl types element  add to the set of types or elements with additional ones  or wrappers  let s say arrays  or structures containing the basic types  as desired   The result of  1 and  2 comprise all the types the WSDL will use  define a set of in and out messages  and maybe faults  in terms of those previously defined types  Define a port-type  which is the collection of pairings of in out messages   You might think of port-type as a WSDL analog to a Java interface  Specify a binding  which implements the port-type and defines how messages will be serialized   Specify a service  which implements the binding    Most of the WSDL is more or less boilerplate   It can look daunting  but that is mostly because of those scary and plentiful angle brackets  I ve found    Some have suggested that this is a long-winded manual process   Maybe   But this is how you can build interoperable services  You can also use tools for defining WSDL  Dynamically generating WSDL from code will lead to interop pitfalls

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Personally  and given what I know  i e   Java and axis   I d generate a Java data model from the  xsd files  Axis 2 can do this   and then add an interface to describe my web service that uses that model  and then generate a WSDL from that interface   Because  NET has all these features as well  it must be possible to do all this in that ecosystem as well

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we can generate wsdl file from xsd but you have to use oracle enterprise pack of eclipse OEPE   simply create xsd and then right click- new- wsdl

[wsdl] Generating a WSDL from an XSD file

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