Sams Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days (Covers Java 11/12), 8th Edition

Lesson 20. Making Web Service Requests

Over the years, much effort has been put into creating a protocol for remote procedure calls (RPCs), which enable one computer program to call a procedure in another program over the Internet or another network. Often, these protocols are language agnostic. A client program written in a language such as C++ can call a remote database server written in Java or something else without either side knowing (or caring) about its partner’s implementation language.

Web services—networking programs that use the Web to offer data in a form easily digested by other software—are used to share account authentication between sites, facilitate e-commerce transactions between stores, provide business-to-business information ...