Understanding Web services

Web services are a new breed of Web applications. These independent application components are published on to the Web in such a way that other Web applications can find and use them. They take the Web to its next stage of evolution, in which software components can discover other software components and conduct business transactions. Examples of Web services include a credit card service that processes credit card transactions for a given account number, a market data service that provides stock market data associated with a specified stock symbol, and an airline service that provides flight schedule, availability, and reservation functionalities. Major vendors like IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun, among others, are investing heavily in Web services technology. Ranging from simple to complex, Web services bring the promise of flexible, open-standards-based, distributed computing to the Internet.