| Flex 2 Developer's Guide > Data Access and Interconnectivity > Using RPC Components > Using features specific to WebService components | |||
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Flex applications can interact with web services that define their interfaces in a Web Services Description Language 1.1 (WSDL 1.1) document, which is available as a URL. WSDL is a standard format for describing the messages that a web service understands, the format of its responses to those messages, the protocols that the web service supports, and where to send messages. Flex supports RPC-encoded and document-literal web services. Web services use either RPC- and document-style SOAP bindings. The two most common types of web services use RPC-encoded or document-literal SOAP bindings; the terms encoded and literal indicate the type of WSDL-to-SOAP mapping that a service uses.
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Flex does not support the following XML schema types: choice, union, default, list, or group. Flex also does not support the following data types: duration, gMonth, gYear, gYearMonth, gDay, gMonthDay, Name, Qname, NCName, anyURI, or language. (Flex supports anyURL but treats it like a String. |
Flex applications support web service requests and results that are formatted as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) messages. SOAP provides the definition of the XML-based format that you can use for exchanging structured and typed information between a web service client, such as a Flex application, and a web service.
Adobe Flash Player operates within a security sandbox that limits what Flex applications and other Flash applications can access over HTTP. Flash applications are only allowed HTTP access to resources on the same domain and by the same protocol from which they were served. This presents a problem for web services, because they are typically accessed from remote locations. The Flex proxy, available in Flex Data Services, intercepts requests to remote web services, redirects the requests, and then returns the responses to the client.
If you are not using Flex Data Services, you can access web services in the same domain as your Flex application or a crossdomain.xml (cross-domain policy) file that allows access from your application's domain must be installed on the web server hosting the RPC service. For more information about crossdomain.xml files, see Applying Flex Security in Building and Deploying Flex 2 Applications.
Flex 2.01
