Web Services Architecture

Web Services Stack

Web Services Definition

A collection of XML-based technologies developed by the e-business community

Web services are application components

Web services communicate using open protocols

Web services are self-contained and self-describing

Web services can be discovered using UDDI

Web services can be used by other applications

XML is the basis for Web services

How Does it Work

The basic Web services platform is XML + HTTP

XML provides a language which can be used between different platforms and programming languages and still express complex messages and functions.

Web services platform elements:

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration)

WSDL (Web Services Description Language)

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

SOAP is an XML-based protocol to let applications exchange information over HTTP.

SOAP is a communication protocol

SOAP is a format for sending messages

SOAP is designed to communicate via Internet

SOAP is platform independent

SOAP is language independent

SOAP is based on XML

SOAP is simple and extensible

SOAP allows you to get around firewalls

SOAP is a W3C standard

WSDL (Web Services Definition Language)

An XML-based language for describing Web  Services.

WSDL is based on XML

WSDL is used to describe Web services

WSDL is used to locate Web services

WSDL is a W3C standard

It does not depend on the underlying protocol.

But: It is not much human-readable.

UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration)

UDDI is a directory service where companies can register and search for Web services.

UDDI is a directory for storing information about web services

UDDI is a directory of web service interfaces described by WSDL

UDDI communicates via SOAP

UDDI is built into the Microsoft .NET platform