What are web services
                     What are web services?
Owen Jones
Writer at Smart-living-tips.com, made
many article contributions to
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Web Services refers to the application services which is served on internet 
through websites allowing machine to machine interaction. It integrates 
various aspects of web application such as XML messaging service (to tag 
the data), SOAP (transfer the data), WSDL (service description) & UDDL 
(listing service availability).
Irrespective of OS or programming language, web services allow 
interaction of one program with another like JAVA can interact with perl 
and windows application can talk with UNIX. Web services are updated 
from of Electronic data interchange and it requires Internet for direct 
application to application interaction.
The main purpose of using web services is to exchange data between 
different software platforms. It's characteristics are defined as
System to system interactions
Interoperability
Independent platform and Operating System
Language independence
Architecture based on World Wide Web
The main components of web services are
SOAP (simple object access protocol)
SOAP (simple object access protocol)
SOAP is XML based protocol used for sharing information between 
two or more systems. It is platform and language independent, use as 
a communication protocol and is specifically designed to 
communicate over internet.
WSDL (web services description language)
It is created by Microsoft and IBM meant for information exchange 
in distributed environment. WSDL is also a XML-based language 
and it guides how to access the web services.
UDDI (universal description, discovery & integration)
It is developed to define the set of services that are both publicly 
available and services within the organization. It contains XML 
based registry that helps business find other internet based services. It 
is platform independent and uses WSDL to connect to other web 
services.
Benefits of web services
Low cost for Communication
Compare to other methods like EDI and B2B, web services save lot 
of time and money as it uses SOAP over HTTP. It acts as an 
automatic dictionary which helps businesses to have correct 
information about other service providers. 
It increases visibility of your business among customers thereby 
helps in increasing your business revenues.
Interoperability
A web service is virtual platform that allows exchange of application 
data and services among other applications. For example a web 
application developed in Java or Perl can exchange or talk to web 
service of another web based platform.
Standardized Protocol
Web services is based on standard protocol for communication and 
all four layers uses well defined protocols (service transport, XML 
messaging, service description & service discovery). Standardization 
has many advantages as it reduce the cost due to competition, thus 
increase the quality and provide wide range of choice.
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