Web service

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According to the W3C a Web serviceTemplate:Ref is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface that is described in a machine-processable format such as WSDL. Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its interface using messages, which may be enclosed in a SOAP envelope, or follow a REST approach. These messages are typically conveyed using HTTP, and normally comprise XML in conjunction with other Web-related standards. Software applications written in various programming languages and running on various platforms can use web services to exchange data over computer networks like the Internet in a manner similar to inter-process communication on a single computer. This interoperability (for example, between Java and Python, or Microsoft Windows and Linux applications) is due to the use of open standards. OASIS and the W3C are the primary committees responsible for the architecture and standardization of web services. To improve interoperability between web service implementations, the WS-I organization has been developing a series of profiles to further define the standards involved.

1 Standards used
2 Advantages of web services
3 Disadvantages of web services
4 Platforms
5 Companies providing Web Services
6 Notes
7 See also
8 External links

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Standards used

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Web Services Protocol Stack: The Standards and protocols used to consume a web service, considered as a protocol stack.
XML: All data to be exchanged is formatted with XML tags. The encoded message may conform to a messaging standard such as SOAP or the older XML-RPC. The XML-RPC scheme calls functions remotely, whilst SOAP favours a more modern (object-oriented) approach based on the Command pattern.
Common protocols: data can be transported between applications using any number of common protocols, such as HTTP, FTP, SMTP and XMPP.
WSDL: The public interface to the web service is described by Web Services Description Language, or WSDL. This is an XML-based service description on how to communicate using the web service.
UDDI: The web service information is published using this protocol. It should enable applications to look up web services information in order to determine whether to use them.
ebXML: A modular electronic business framework is enabled using this set of specifications. The vision of ebXML is to enable a global electronic marketplace where enterprises of any size and in any geographical location can meet and conduct business with each other through the exchange of XML-based messages.
WS-Security: The Web Services Security protocol has been accepted as an OASIS standard. The standard allows authentication of actors and confidentiality of the messages sent.
WS-ReliableExchange: A SOAP-based specification that fulfills reliable messaging requirements critical to some applications of Web Services. Accepted as an OASIS standard.
WS-Management: This specification describes a SOAP-based protocol for systems management of personal computers, servers, devices, and other manageable hardware and Web services and other applications.

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Advantages of web services

Web services provide interoperability between various software applications running on disparate platforms.
Web services use open standards and protocols. Protocols and data formats are text-based where possible, making it easy for developers to comprehend.
By utilizing HTTP, web services can work through many common firewall security measures without requiring changes to the firewall filtering rules. Other forms of RPC may more often be blocked.
Web services allow software and services from different companies and locations to be combined easily to provide an integrated service.
Web services allow the reuse of services and components within an infrastructure.
Web services are loosely coupled thereby facilitating a distributed approach to application integration.

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Disadvantages of web services

Web services standards features such as transactions are currently nonexistent or still in their infancy compared to more mature distributed computing open standards such as CORBA. This is likely to be a temporary disadvantage as most vendors have committed to the OASIS standards to implement the Quality of Service aspects of their products.
Web services may suffer from poor performance compared to other distributed computing approaches such as RMI, CORBA, or DCOM. This is a common trade-off when choosing text-based formats. XML explicitly does not count among its design goals either conciseness of encoding or efficiency of parsing. This could change with the XML Infoset standard, which describes XML-based languages in terms of abstractions (elements, attributes, logical nesting). The traditional angle-bracket representation is now seen as an ASCII (or Unicode) serialisation of XML, not XML itself. In this model, binary serialisation is an equally valid alternative. Binary representations such as SOAP MTOM promise to improve the wire efficiency of XML messaging.