I’m new web services (and, specifically, Java web services) and have seen the terms endpoint and exchange sprinkled throughout various frameworks. I did some deductive reasoning and eventually found the first term, endpoint, defined in the W3C docs as a binding between a protocol and and URL.
What I have not been able to find is a generic W3C term for “exchange” as it is used by the Camel framework and in other places.
Does anybody know what these so-called “exchanges” are, what is being exchanged (both directions), and where I could find some literature about their theoretical/abstract definitions?
Thanks for any help here!
In Camel, an Exchange is the container holding the information during the entire routing of a Message received by a Consumer. Its comprised on properties, an IN message and an OUT message. Each message consists of headers, a body and attachments. The IN message carries the request message and the IN or OUT can be used to carry the response message (depending on the Processors being used).
See the Exchange class documentation for more information: http://camel.apache.org/maven/current/camel-core/apidocs/org/apache/camel/Exchange.html