The term Web Service describes a standardized way of having applications communicate with each other using the XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI open standards over an Internet protocol backbone. FDSC has created web services for both .Net and Java based applications.

Unlike traditional client/server models, Web services do not provide the user with a GUI. Web services instead share business logic, data and processes through a programmatic interface across a network.

Web services allow different applications from different sources to communicate with each other without time-consuming custom coding, and because all communication is in XML, Web services are not tied to any one operating system or programming language. For example, Java can talk with Perl, Windows applications can talk with UNIX applications.

Key Benefits

By enabling applications to share data across different hardware platforms and operating systems, Web services provide many technological and business benefits, including:

• Opening the door to new business opportunities by making it easy to connect with vendors, suppliers, partners or resellers.
• Delivering integrated experiences to users. Users can move from one application to another seamlessly.
• Saving time and money by cutting development time.
• Enabling businesses to easily make their own Web services available to others.
• Having disparate and /or distributed applications tallking to each other and exchanging information.

Key Considerations

Some key considerations to be kept in mind while building web service include:

• Deciding on the what functionality or data to expose through the web service.
• Response Time: Time taken to get a response back to the user from another application or system through the web service.
• Security of the data being transmitted.
• Effect of the web service on performance of the application.

Web Service usage situations

Some examples of situations where a web service can be used are

• An enterprise might make its product catalog and inventory available to its vendors through a Web service to achieve better supply chain management.
• Want two disparate applications to communicate or exchange data. Example: you want your .NET application to talk to fetch data from a mainframe application.
• Getting Real time information. Example An e-commerce site may hook up to a warehouse to get the number of items in stock in real time.
• Providing an aggregated service that is a comparative service giving you the best deal on products. Example: best deals on the airfares after comparing information from various data sources.

The opportunities are many.....

To summarize the web services provide easy application and data integration, versatility, interoperability, code re-use and cost saving. Hence use of web service is gaining popularity at an immense speed.

Check out our Skill Summary for more information.