A Web Services Description Language (WSDL) contains two distinct sections: an abstract description and a binding. The binding describes how messages should be serialised onto some underlying protocol (e.g. HTTP) to send to a web service. Prior art bindings can be described as "concrete" because they define all the connection information required for a client to immediately interact with a web service. However the concrete binding cannot be provided ahead of runtime, which prevents the implementation of asynchronous callbacks. The present invention introduces the concept of a partially specified binding, which the applicant calls a "template" WSDL binding. A template binding is identical to a concrete binding, except that some parameters are left undefined. A client terminal 10 obtains a template binding from a web services registry 30 and uses the template to request a concrete binding from a web server 34. The web server uses a binding setup protocol 38 to generate a concrete binding from the template binding, and sends the concrete binding to the client. The client can then invoke the web service using the concrete binding.
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