An opaque representation of an application endpoint. Typically, an
Endpoint
object represents a business entity, but it
may represent a party of any sort. Conceptually, an
Endpoint
object is the mapping of a logical name
(example, a URI) to a physical location, such as a URL.
For messaging using a provider that supports profiles, an application
does not need to specify an endpoint when it sends a message because
destination information will be contained in the profile-specific header.
However, for point-to-point plain SOAP messaging, an application must supply
an
Endpoint
object to
the
SOAPConnection
method
call
to indicate the intended destination for the message.
The subclass
URLEndpoint
can be used when an application
wants to send a message directly to a remote party without using a
messaging provider.
The default identification for an
Endpoint
object
is a URI. This defines what JAXM messaging
providers need to support at minimum for identification of
destinations. A messaging provider
needs to be configured using a deployment-specific mechanism with
mappings from an endpoint to the physical details of that endpoint.
Endpoint
objects can be created using the constructor, or
they can be looked up in a naming
service. The latter is more flexible because logical identifiers
or even other naming schemes (such as DUNS numbers)
can be bound and rebound to specific URIs.