ACCESS TO WEB SERVICES

The present invention provides a web service gateway which enables a web client to access a target service which does not provide a transport mechanism with which the client can communicate. The gateway imports a target service document describing the target service interface, end point addresses and supported transport mechanisms, and then modifies it by adding end point addresses and transport mechanisms supported by the gateway. A client may then access the target service by obtaining the modified document and sending a request to a gateway provided end point address using the associated transport mechanism. The gateway then forwards the request to the target service by converting the request and forwarding it to an end point address and transport mechanism specified in the target service document.