Page History

...

Services have the ability to call other services. So, chaining small services together to accomplish a larger task makes reusing existing services much easier.

Services which are declared in a component (ofbiz-component.xml file) are used in different applications can be defined only once by creating Global Service Definition files or services reachable from anywhere in OFBiz, and even outside using the export feature. Though this possibility is not commonly used (no examples OOTB), it's also possible to create services which are specific to an application can : restricted to be restricted and available only to that applicationin that application. For that, you put the services definitions and implementation files under the WEB-INF directory. You can also override a service by using the same name down in the deployment context (which is first framework, then themes, then applications, then specialpurpose, then hot-deploy). This is handy, but beware if not wanted...

When used in a web application services are available to web events, which allow events to stay small and reuse existing logic in the Services Framework. Also, services can be defined as 'exportable' which means they are allowed to be accessed by outside parties. Currently there is a SOAP EventHandler which allows services to be made available via SOAP. Other forms of remote invocation may be added to the framework in the future.

...