Monday, February 2, 2009

Introduction to Web Services

Web Services can convert your applications into Web-applications.

Web Services are published, found, and used through the Web.

What are Web Services?

  • Web services are application components
  • Web services communicate using open protocols
  • Web services are self-contained and self-describing
  • Web services can be discovered using UDDI
  • Web services can be used by other applications
  • XML is the basis for Web services

The basic Web services platform is XML + HTTP.

The HTTP protocol is the most used Internet protocol.

XML provides a language which can be used between different platforms and programming languages and still express complex messages and functions.

Web services platform elements:

  • SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
  • UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration)
  • WSDL (Web Services Description Language)

The Future of Web services

The Web Services platform is a simple, interoperable, messaging framework. It still misses many important features like security and routing. But, these features will be available as soon as SOAP becomes more advanced.

Hopefully, Web services can make it much easier for applications to communicate.

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