4 / 32
In today’s world, the need for agile, reusable and self-contained applications is at its
peak. A web service can be described as a reusable software component that can be
published and used by another software over the internet. The goal here is to provide an
easy mechanism for applications to locate a service that provides the desired function
and then implement it to achieve its goal.
Many advantages are associated
with the use of web services. In
essence, the main advantage web
services have over regular web
applications lies in its interopera-
ble nature, that is web services can
communicate with different appli-
cations to provide a higher business
level functionality despite the vari-
ous underlying technologies of each
application. Web services are hard-
ware, programming language, and
operating system independent. This
independence is due to the use of
the standardized XML technologies.
Such technologies include SOAP,
WSDL, and UDDI. Furthermore, web
services offer additional advantages
including reduced costs, application
integration, and data integration.
Several technologies support the process
involved in the use of web services. These tech-
nologies are summarized below:
is a messaging protocol that enables data
communication between web services.
is a standard used by the service
provider to describe a web ser-
vice and is used by the consum-
er to locate a web service
An overview of Web Services
Benefits provided with the
use of Web Services
Technologies used in Web Services
1. Simple Object Access Protocol
(SOAP)
2. Universal Description Discovery
Interface (UDDI)
1 |
July 2018
DoIT Newsletter