The Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies protocol documentation provides detailed technical specifications for proprietary Microsoft protocols (including extensions to industry-standard or other published protocols) that are used by Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies to communicate with other Microsoft products.
This protocols document can be used to implement your own Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) client. There are two type protocols, the SharePoint Front-End Protocols and SharePoint Back-End Protocols.
- SharePoint Front-End Protocols – These protocols are intended for interoperability between SharePoint Products and Technologies and external applications.
- SharePoint Back-End Protocols – These protocols are intended for interoperability between components of SharePoint Products and Technologies, or third party components implementing some or all of the functionality of a SharePoint component.
The wsdl.exe or svc.exe services can be used to generate the proxy class which can be invoked in your client application. But, more importantly, you need to understand the transaction protocol. The protocol is the foundation of the SharePoint SOA. There are some keywords that occur in the protocol document, “MUST,” “SHOULD,” “MAYBE” are just some of the important ones to remember.
The protocol document structure is as follows (The MS-PLSP, which is first SharePoint protocol I have read in PETC, so I used this protocol as an example.):
- Introduction: The section introduces the summary of protocol, include the glossary and reference (the keyword reference the other protocol document), the protocol and other protocol relationship diagram, the Prerequisites/Preconditions that you should to do to use the current protocol, the protocol overview and so on.
- Messages: The section specified the protocol will support the SOAP version (RFC document) and the Common Message Syntax which is the schema of the protocol SOAP transaction package.
- Protocol Details: The section specified the Abstract Data Model and other detail of the server (the operation of the service and the structure of the message).
- Message Processing Events and Sequencing Rules: The rules of the request and response messages, the Elements schema (the complex types, simple types, attributes, groups and attribute groups) of the request and response SOAP package.
- Protocol Examples: The section specified the example of the current protocol.
- Security: The section specified the security that this protocol should be use.
- Appendix A: Full WSDL: The section is the full WSDL file, you can use this WSDL to generate the proxy class which will be used in your client application.
- Appendix B: Product Behavior: The section specified which office product is valid for this protocol.
This was just a simple introduction; please look at the starter to actually use the SharePoint SOA protocol.
Enjoy~
Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc339475(v=office.12)