Microsoft® .NET Kick Start

Defining Web Services

Since the introduction of Web services, various definitions have surfaced. As a simple definition, I like this MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) definition of a Web service. “A Web Service is a unit of application logic providing data and services to other applications. Applications access Web Services via ubiquitous Web protocols and data formats such as HTTP, XML and SOAP with no need to worry about how each Web Service is implemented.” Even this simplistic definition captures a number of key points:

• Unit of application logic— Web services, in a number of ways, are like software components, such as .NET components and COM components, because they represent a unit of exposed application logic. This also indicates that ...