What is the sense define several services in single WSDL file

Question

I understand it makes sense to exposes the same functionality (interface in WSDL 1.2, portType in WSDL 1.1) under different endpoints (ports in WSDL 1.1), depending on underlying transport protocol (definined by the binding). But what is the sense to put definitions of different services into a single WSDL? Especially, if each service exposes only a single operation?

For instance see the following WSDL file: http://seekda.com/cache?uri=http://score.itsc.uah.edu/services/catalog/SCOOPCatalogServices.wsdl&type=xml

WSDL1.2 specification mentions that "WSDL 1.1 supports having multiple services in a single WSDL file. This has caused confusion amongst users.". They resolve it by allowing "multiple services, where each MAY be of a different service type.". What does it mean -- of different type here?

Maciej

Answer 1

BTW, I found the WSDL at http://score.itsc.uah.edu/services/catalog/SCOOPCatalogServices.wsdl.

This is unusual. I've seen multiple bindings for a given port type, perhaps one for SOAP 1.1 and one for SOAP 1.2; but I don't think I've ever seen this pattern of one port type per operation.

There's a problem with the WSDL, according to XMLSpy. The <soap:operation/> are missing their soapAction attributes.