Enterprise SOA

What are web services?

Web services are a standard way of creating a self-describing service based on XML that uses the Internet to communicate. What is a service? A service is a program that talks to other programs. The self-describing part of web services is the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Every web service has a WSDL file that describes its interface. This WSDL file, which is expressed in XML, can be used to generate a program automatically to invoke a web service and get information from it. While communicating with a service can be automated, more study is required to understand the information that must be provided to a web service to get the desired result and to use the information properly. The Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) protocol is a standard for creating a searchable directory of WSDL files so that web services can be located and the WSDL files obtained. You can use UDDI when you are designing or running a program. Web services frequently use the SOAP standard for transferring data back and forth, although it is possible to communicate in other ways as well. http://OASIS and the http://W3C, two technology standards bodies, are primarily responsible for the architecture and standardization of web services. The Web Services Interoperability (http://WS-I) Organization has been developing a series of profiles to further define the standards involved for interoperability. New standards for managing web services and improving reliability ...