Introduction to Web Services

Web Services can make your applications Web applications.

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

What You Should Already Know

Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:

• HTML
• XML

If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials on our Home page.

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

How Does it Work?

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)

We will explain these topics later in the tutorial

The Future of Web services

Don't expect too much, too soon.

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

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

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