WEB SERVICES

Posted by mady | Posted in | Posted on 5:47 AM

Web services are a natural consequence of the evolution of the Web into an open medium which facilitates complex business and scientific application interactions. Web services are concerned with the problems of enabling systematic application-to-application interactions over the Web, and the integration of the existing network computer infrastructure into the Web. The key components of this work are a focus on interoperability, support for efficient application integration, and the creation of a uniform representation of applications within heterogeneous distributed systems.

The Web services model builds upon existing industry standardization efforts centered on the Extensible Markup Language (XML), and proposes a two pronged approach to deal with the interoperability requirements associated with heterogeneous systems: enable base interoperability using a small set of common protocols, and develop a uniform representation of network applications which are accessible using multiple communication protocols.

The goal of Web services is to provide a flexible framework where universal interoperability does not preclude efficient integration.

Imagine that you are a printer-reselling tycoon. As a printer-reselling tycoon, you require constant information on the state of your suppliers in order to get the best price and to meet the demands of the printer retailers who purchase your product. Your suppliers are your lifeline, so you must always know exactly what price they are asking, whether or not they have stock available for immediate shipping, the general quality of their product, and their timeliness in fulfilling orders.
You used to do your business by phoning your sales contacts at each supplier, but you found you were losing excruciatingly large opportunities, because Bob at Acme Printers used to drone on for 20 minutes about last weekend's football game before he would take your order. As the printer commodity market moved to the Internet, you were able to quickly visit Web sites for your different suppliers and immediately get their price and on-hand stock quantities. The problem was that each supplier had their own unique Web site with different approaches for getting at the data you needed—and even more differences in how they actually took your orders.
You longed for consistency. You dreamed of a world where a single application would query all the different printer manufacturers for their information, and you could place your orders (using the same application) from the manufacturer of your choosing, based on product price, shipping costs, quantity on hand, and your personal knowledge of the quality of the manufacturer’s service in handling orders. With an application like that, you would make millions of dollars by being the quickest, most efficient printer-reselling tycoon in the industry.
When Web Services came along, you knew your dream application would soon be a reality and your millions were as good as in the bank.


The margins for printer reselling may not exactly make millionaires overnight, but one of the more compelling opportunities for XML Web Services is certainly the ability to create common, well-defined interfaces that can be shared across an industry and make business flow competitively and easily.
Web Services provide a simple, flexible, standards-based model for binding applications together over the Internet that takes advantage of existing infrastructure and applications. Web applications can be easily assembled with locally developed services and existing services, irrespective of the platform, development language, or object model used to implement any of the constituent services or applications.

The Microsoft .NET Framework provides an application model and key enabling technologies to simplify the creation, deployment, and ongoing evolution of secure, reliable, scalable, highly available Web Services while building on existing developer skills.

Comments (2)

Thanks for such a continuous great postings.Thank you very much. Class 3 Digital Signature Certificate

This post is really insightful; it has helped me understand so many think. Class 3 Digital Signature Certificate

Post a Comment