 - Web services (sometimes called application services) are services (usually including some combination of programming and data, but possibly including human resources as well) that are made available from a business's Web server for Web users or other Web-connected programs. Providers of Web services are generally known as application service providers. Web services range from such major services as storage management and customer relationship management (CRM) down to much more limited services such as the furnishing of a stock quote and the checking of bids for an auction item. The accelerating creation and availability of these services is a major Web trend.
Users can access some Web services through a peer-to-peer arrangement rather than by going to a central server. Some services can communicate with other services and this exchange of procedures and data is generally enabled by a class of software known as middleware. Services previously possible only with the older standardized service known as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) increasingly are likely to become Web services. Besides the standardization and wide availability to users and businesses of the Internet itself, Web services are also increasingly enabled by the use of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) as a means of standardizing data formats and exchanging data. XML is the foundation for the Web Services Description Language (WSDL).
As Web services proliferate, concerns include the overall demands on network bandwidth and, for any particular service, the effect on performance as demands for that service rise. A number of new products have emerged that enable software developers to create or modify existing applications that can be "published" (made known and potentially accessible) as Web services.
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Learn more about Web services development |
| Operating system virtualization and Web services: Web services development and operating systems virtualization may be two different types of abstraction, but virtualization techniques look like they can have positive impact. |
| Creating rich Web service clients with Flash and Flex: Flash and Flex, titans within the RIA universe, now have XML, Ajax and scripting language functionality that make them better suited for Web services development. |
| Oracle links SOA, data services, BI and BAM: When it comes to incorporating data services, business intelligence (BI), and business activity monitoring (BAM), Oracle has not lost sight of its database roots. |
| Is Ruby on Rails ready for enterprise SOA?: Ruby on Rails promises ease in RESTful SOA development, but for it to move up to enterprise class, developers need to know how to make it scalable. |
| 2006 JavaOne coverage: A compilation of stories written about the JavaOne conference held in San Francisco this past May. |
| Chapter of the week: Security and Ajax: This chapter, excerpted from Ajax in Action, discusses security-related concerns that have particular implications for Ajax. |
| Chapter of the week: XML Web services: This chapter, excerpted from Core C# and .NET, takes a look at the pluses and minues of implementing and consuming Web services in a .NET environment. |
| Chapter of the week: Working with Beehive Web services and JSR 181: This chapter, excerpted from Pro Apache Beehive, explores the Web service capabilities that are a part of Apache Beehive. You'll learn about JSR 181, Web Services Metadata for the Java ... |
| Chapter of the week: Introduction to Web services technologies: This chapter, excerpted from Service-Oriented Architecture: A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services, focuses on the standards that make up the Web services platform and how Web ... |
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26 Mar 2007
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