A Web Service is a piece of software functionality that is accessible over a network and built on technologies that are independant of platform, programming language and component model.
- AXIS : Next Generation of Java SOAP (J.Basha & R.Irani)
Webservices are based on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) where software
functionality is distributed as a set of services.
An SOA describes three basic roles:
- Service Provider: The service provider implements the web service, describes the interface to theis service and publishes this interface to a registry for service consumers to find the web service.
- Service Registry: The service registry is a repository of web services to which service providers publish their web service definitions to. Web service consumers use the service registry to find web services and also necessary information inorder to bind to and invoke the web services.
- Service Consumer:The service consumer makes use of the web service created by the service provider.
To achieve the the above mentioned functions of finding a webservice and binding to it if you are a service consumer or publishing your webservice if you are a service provider, one requires a platform and vendor neutral implementation. Several companies like IBM, Microsoft among others have described a web services stack to achieve interoperability.
|
|