Database native Web services - A Cool feature in Oracle 11g

Web services have become a popular way of developing applications. Until now, creating a Web service has required hand-coding or generating the programs necessary to expose a SOAP end-point, and then deploying this code using an application server. These programs need to address all aspects of a Web service’s usage, including generating the WSDL document, parsing and processing the SOAP request, and marshaling the required data into the correct XML format to provide the SOAP response.

Database native Web services, delivered as part of Oracle Database 11g, eliminates all of this complexity for Web services that provide access to data stored in an Oracle Database. Database native Web services let you expose PL/SQL stored procedures, functions, and packages as Web services with zero coding and zero deployment effort. The database native Web services feature also includes a Web service that supports execution of dynamic SQL queries and XQuery expressions. The database HTTP server, provided as part of Oracle XML DB Repository, allows these Web services to be accessed using HTTP and HTTPS, without any additional application server infrastructure. Database native Web services leverage the powerful XML capabilities of Oracle XML DB to automatically generate the WDSL, parse and process the SOAP request, and generate the SOAP response.

A nice step-by-step artcile for using Database native Web services can be found here.