Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux - Third Edition

Web services

Web services can be viewed as web applications that don't include a presentation layer. Service-oriented architecture allows a web service provider to integrate easily with the consumer of that service. Web services enable different applications to share data and functionality among themselves. They allow consumers to access data over the internet without the application knowing the format or the location of the data.

This becomes extremely critical when you don't want to expose the data model or the logic used to access the data, but you still want the data readily available for its consumers. An example would be a web service exposed by a stock exchange. Online brokers can use this web service to get real-time information about ...