| Web Services Introduction |
| The Internet has been an important source of business transactions, operations, e-commerce and various activities of companies and organizations around the world. In most companies and organizations there are large number of computer applications that operate using diverse architecture, operating systems, security features and so on. For all systems to perform efficiently, the key requirements are interoperability, extensibility and security. By the use of web services, the interdependant applications can communicate with one another and perform efficiently. |
| Web Services Definition |
| The W3C definition of web services is - "A Web service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-processable format (specifically WSDL ). Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with other Web-related standards". |
| Core Web Services Standards |
| The four core web services standards are: |
| 1. eXtensible Markup Language ( XML ) |
| 2. Simple Object Access Protocol ( SOAP ) |
| 3. Web Services Destription Language ( WSDL ) |
| 4. Universal Description, Discovery and Integration ( UDDI ) |
| References |
| 1. Web Services Architecture, W3C Working Group Note 11 February 2004. |
| 2. Richard Monson-Haefel, The Ultimate Guide J2EE Web Services, Pearson Education Inc., 2004. |
| 3. Thomas Erl, Service Oriented Architecture, Concepts, Technology and Design, Pearson Education Inc., 2005. |