Web Services Defined

Web Services are Web-based applications that interact in a dynamic fashion with other Web applications. This interaction takes place using a variety of open standards, which we have already seen in this text, including XML and HTTP. Added to these open standards are the newly defined protocols and formats for Web Services: Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI), and Web Services Description Language (WSDL).

As we saw in Chapter 14, “Java and XML: Introduction to XML,” using XML provides a convenient method for describing data being exchanged between applications—data interchange. We can refer to the information being exchanged as business documents. These business documents ...

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