What is the different between Dynamic Web Services, Web Service and WS Inbound Activities ?

What is... This is a short answer and question category.Web Service

To invoke a Web service, you must have a Web Services Description Language(WSDL) document that provides the necessary information for accessing the service. The custom parameters for Web Service activities identify the WSDL document and the XML content to send to the service. They also specify how to handle the response from the Web service.

Web Service
Activity Inspector – Web Service Properties

Web Services activities differ from the other integration activities in two key ways:

  • The content that you send to the Web service must be a well-formed XML file that is namespace self-sufficient.
  • Web services respond to messages sent to them, so the activity needs to be able to handle a response.

WS Inbound Step / Initiate

Web Service Inbound creates a new web services end-point for an activity that needs to provide an integration point and a WSDL to an external system.

In the Process First option, you define the port and operation and the system creates a WSDL from the process definition. The system creates one WSDL for a process, with a section for each Web Service Inbound activity contained within it. The Content Based Correlation enable the system to correlate messages based on the correlations set.

Web Services Inbound Step
Activity Inspector – inbound Properties

In the WSDL First option, you specify an existing WSDL for the system to use in the process.

The WS Security UserName Token authentication provides credential-based access to the activity or process (when used in an initiate activity). Once enabled, all client requests to this activity must contain the same credentials in the request header (in structure defined by WS-Security schema for UserTokens) to be granted access to the activity or process.

The Message Transmission and Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) enable the system to optimize any attachments while sending the response.

Dynamic Web Services

Activities based on this template run a web service operation. Unlike the Web Service template, this activity template enables you to interactively map data between business process attributes and the web services parameters. This activity template supports both secure and non-secure web services.
Non-secure web activities: WSDL File
Dynamic Web Services
Activity Inspector – Web Service Configuration Properties
Secure web activities:

  • HTTP proxy support
    To access a web service that is located outside the firewall, through a HTTP proxy server, you must configure the HTTP proxy parameters.
  • HTTP basic authentication
    web service protected by HTTP authentication
  • SOAP header-based authentication
    web service protected by SOAP header authentication
  • Secure Socket Layer authentication
    web service that is secured by Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
  • DFS (Documentum Foundation Services) services from Process Builder