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Web Services
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Web Services Introduction Web Services have been described as the next evolution in distributed computing and is considered by many to be one of the most important innovations in distributed computing in recent years. A "Web Service" does not refer to a technology or platform but describes a set of interrelated supporting technologies and architectures. At its’ most basic level a Web Service can be described as a: “a Network of applications that use SOAP, UDDI and WSDL to exchange information in the form of XML documents”. This definition, while technically correct, does not provide a full understanding of exactly what Web Services are and does not explain why they are important. Web Services allow the components of an application to be used by another application that is physically located in another part of the world. This is accomplished via the World Wide Web using the Web’s underlying set of protocols, such as the Hyper Text Transport Protocol (HTTP), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Web services are in effect the building blocks for creating open distributed systems that are designed in such a way as to be modular, flexible and platform independent. Web Services, through the use of standardized and reusable components, allow companies to communicate with their customers and business partners. This technology allows companies to develop and deploy their products and services more rapidly with lower costs, improved efficiency and greater productivity. By using Web Services, companies are better able to leverage the distributed nature of modern corporate networks. Web Services - Distributed Computing Prior to the introduction of Web Services, communication between two applications, for the most part, took place using a tightly coupled mechanism in which one program called the other through an Application Programming Interface (API). Examples of such mechanisms are the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) or the Distributed Component Architecture (DCOM). Architectures such as DCOM failed to become the standard way of building distributed systems simply because they were too complex and tended to be operating system specific. Instead of focusing on specific areas these architectures tried address every possible requirement. This, in turn, required ever more sophisticated communication layer software to be installed on machines participating in these distributed environments. Web Services, however, provide a means of integrating applications in such a way that applications can work together without changing anything in the communication layer. In a company whose distributed environment has many client machines this is a huge benefit as deploying changes to these clients can be time consuming, expensive and resource intensive. Interoperability (meaning information is transferred in a way that satisfies the needs of both parties) had always been a major importance for companies and organisations. Recently two areas of system integration has become of even greater importance. Firstly integrating systems across the enterprise know as Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and communication between systems belonging to different organisations called Business to Business Integration (B2Bi). Of the two areas EAI is the most common problem that businesses face. For example, a typical company may have applications running on a Window NT network, an AS400 payroll system and several UNIX based systems. These systems need to collaborate by passing information between the various systems. B2B represents the business transactions that companies need to transmit between each other. For example, a company may need to purchase supplies from another and in order to do so they need to exchange information.
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