Understanding Web Services

1. What is "Web Services"?

Web services are services that are made available from a business's server for Web users or other Web-connected programs. Web services exploit the existence of the Internet and the World Wide Web, including the fact that every Web user has a browser that serves as a ready-made user interface to services, no matter where they are physically located. The term implies the ability to create such services easily and then make it possible for potential users to find your service. The original term was "application services." Web services became the new term as the emphasis shifted toward the Web-based standards and tools that would allow your business to easily put its services on the Web and enable people to find them. This Learn IT intends to give you a "quick handle" on what this is all about and what you and your business may want to do about it now.

2. Who should create Web services and who would use them?

Almost any product can be sold on the Web and many services can actually be performed on the Web, remotely and without human intervention. Computing and data storage services are good examples. Web site use analysis, medical diagnosis (given appropriate input devices and data), insurance need analysis, and stock trading, are other examples. A service that you now provide by mail or by in-person service may often be offered to remote users.

Many of these services can already be found on the Web, often built at considerable expense. Web services includes the computing platforms, standard data formats specified by industry or in general, ways of exchanging data, and ways of posting the availability of services to the world that will make building these services faster, cheaper, and safer.

3. How do you create a Web service?

In addition to the usual program development methodologies, you use a programming language and related "platform" such as Microsoft's VisualBasic and .NET set of development facilities or Sun Microsystem's Java language and SunOne platform. Along with these, you use special programming standards created especially for Web services. The four main programming standards used in creating a Web service are:

• XML (Extensible Markup Language), a standard for defining the names and properties of data items that can then be passed along with the data itself between a service requestor and a service provider.

• SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), a set of rules for how to include Web services requests and responses within the exchanges between a Web user and a Web service provider (SOAP exchanges are carried within HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol – requests and responses)

• WSDL (Web Services Description Language), an XML-based language used to describe the services a business offers and what protocols (such as SOAP) to use to get them

• UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration), a registry that allows a Web service provider to announce and describe their service so that potential users will learn about it

4. Who sets the standards and where are they headed?

In addition to the currently-used standard interfaces, several organizations have developed or are developing new standards that will ensure greater interoperability in the future and add standards providing greater security and management of services.

• The World Wide Consortium (W3C), developer of the Web's underlying protocol, HTTP, and Web page language, HTM, also developed XML, the standard on which many other standards depend (see step 5).

• Industry collaborations originated SOAP and WDSL and submitted them to the W3C. These standards are now W3C Recommendations.

• OASIS (originally an acronym for Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Systems) was formed by a number of leading computer companies including IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. UDDI, ebXML, and several other standards were developed under the auspices of OASIS.

• Web Services Interoperability Organization (WSI), another organization formed by the major industry participants and largely led by IBM, Microsoft, and webMethods offers a series of standards aimed at making Web services work across platforms. Its interoperability work is embodied in a document called Basic Profile Version 1.

5. What are the major Web services development platforms?

Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM each have a set of development tools aimed at helping developers create Web services. The common set of standard Web services tools is intended to allow all Web services to interoperate among different operating system platforms.

• Microsoft's .NET includes development tools that integrate Web services support. These tools are Visual Studio .NET, which includes support for Visual Basic .NET, Visual C++ .NET, Visual C# .NET, and Visual J#.NET; certain support capabilities in its servers; Web services-capable smart clients, including cell phones and PDAs; and possibly a few of its own Web services, such as MapPoint.

• Sun Microsystems' Java Enterprise systems include application program interfaces (APIs) that allow the programmer to create Web services using the Java language. Theses interfaces include Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC), Java API for XML Messaging (JAXM), and others.

IBM's WebSphere provides a set of products for creating Web services that incorporates the Java interfaces from Sun Microsystems.

6. What are some other Web services standards?

There are a number of other "core" standards, especially for use with XML. These include:

• Schemas and XML Schema Definition Language, which provide rigorous rules for ensuring that documents can be handled automatically by programs · XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language), a language for creating a style sheet that describes how data sent over the Web using XML is to be presented to the user, and XSL Transformations, a way to describe how to transform (change) the structure of an XML document into an XML document with a different structure

• Xlink, a specification for how to create internal and external hypertext links within an XML document

Then there are hundreds of XML "applications," or effective standards for exchanging data within a particular vertical industry or type of business. A few examples include:

• XSTAR, an XML System for Textual and Archaeological Research

• Election Markup Language (EML)

• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)

• Materials Property Data Markup Language (MoDL)

• Weather Observation Markup Format

• Gene Expression Markup Language

• Financial Products Markup Language

• Exploration and Mining Markup Language

• Encoding and Markup for Texts of the Ancient Near East

A number of XML applications aim at providing generic approaches to business data and program exchange. These include:

• EbXML Messaging, which defines a standard way to describe business-to-business data exchange

• WS-Security and WS-Reliable Messaging are attempts to describe reliable messaging in any kind of data exchange

• Universal Business Language (UBL), being developed by OASIS, aims at defining a generic definition for a common business document that would be applicable in any industry.

• WS-Choreography is an attempt to define the sequence of operations involved in a business data exchange

• WS-Policy is an attempt to define a way to describe (create a profile for) which combination of standards a business is using

• Web services management standards initiatives (for example, how to update the version of a Web standard that you use)

7. Should your business create Web services now?

For many businesses and other enterprises, the general advice from experts seems to be "Yes," with the caution that many standards are open-ended and, for some needs, still not there yet. The creation of a Web service may require a partially ad hoc implementation for now to be replaced later with the standard approach. The return on investment for a Web service created now may take more time to arrive; the upside is that the learning curve will be more gradual over time, possibly improving long-term ROI.

8. What products exist that can help you create Web services?

In addition to the operating system platform products mentioned in step 5, a number of vendors provide approaches or tools for creating Web services.

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