What Is Web Services

Web services builds on SOAP and HTTP.

Web services is at once a technology, a process, and a phenomenon.

As a technology it is a set of protocols that builds on the global connectivity made possible by SOAP and the synergies of XML and HTTP.

As a process, it is an approach to software discovery and connection over the Web.
As a phenomenon, it's an industry-wide realization that the decentralized, loosely coupled, synergistic Web can't be ignored.

Web services builds on SOAP's capability for distributed, decentralized network communication by adding new protocols and conventions that expose business functions to interested parties over the Internet from any Web-connected device.

SOAP, for example, is not a stand-alone technology, but the result of synergies between XML and HTTP.




Web services is a technology and process for discovery and connection.

Web services represents an industry-wide response to the need for a flexible and efficient business collaboration environment.

Technically, it is a way to link loosely coupled systems using technology that doesn't bind them to a particular programming language, component model, or platform.

Practically, it represents a discrete business process with supporting protocols that functions by describing and exposing itself to users of the Web, being invoked by a remote user, and returning a response. 

It includes:

Describing: Web services describes its functionality and attributes so that other applications can figure out how to use it.

Exposing: Web services register with a repository that contains a white pages holding basic service-provider information, a yellow pages listing services by category, and a green pages describing how to connect and use the services.

Being invoked: When a Web service has been located, a remote application can invoke the service.

Returning a response: When a service has been invoked, results are returned to the requesting application.

The driving force behind Web services is the desire to allow businesses to use the Internet to publish, discover, and aggregate other Web services using the global underpinning of SOAP.