Web Services in Nutshell

Web services are services ,usually including some combination of programming and data, but possibly including human resources as well.
These services are made available from a business's Web server for Web users or other Web-connected programs.

Providers of Web services are generally known as application service providers.

Users can access some Web services through a peer-to-peer arrangement.

Some services can communicate with other services and this exchange of procedures and data is generally enabled by a class of software known as middleware.


The basic Web services platform is XML + HTTP.

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

The HTTP protocol is the most used Internet protocol.


Web services platform elements:

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


XML is used to tag the data,
SOAP is used to transfer the data,
WSDL is used for describing the services available
UDDI is used for listing what services are available.


Web services allow organizations to communicate data without intimate knowledge of each other's IT systems behind the firewall.

Unlike traditional client/server models, such as a Web server/Web page system, Web services do not provide the user with a GUI. Web services instead share business logic, data and processes through a programmatic interface across a network. The applications interface, not the users. Developers can then add the Web service to a GUI (such as a Web page or an executable program) to offer specific functionality to users.


Web services allow different applications from different sources to communicate with each other without time-consuming custom coding, and because all communication is in XML, Web services are not tied to any one operating system or programming language. For example, Java can talk with Perl, Windows applications can talk with UNIX applications.