A WSDL document contains the following seven elements which are used to describe the services:

1. types – The types element defines the data types that are used in web services. The types element is a container for XML Schema type definitions.

2. message – The message element describes the data being exchanged between the web service and the client

3. operation – A message exchange is represented in the form of operation. It is an abstract description of an action. The operation refers to one or more messages.

4. portType – The portType elements refers to a collection of operations supported by one or more endpoints.

5. binding – The binding element specifies the concrete protocol and data format specification used by the service. The binding can be made with protocols like SOAP, HTTP GET and HTTP POST and they have the information on location of the web services.

6. port – The port elements defines a single communication endpoint for the binding. This provides the address for binding. The endpoint is a combination of a binding and an address

7. service – The service element is a collection of related endpoints (port).