WEB SERVICES Casey Bauer Hannah Mc Mahon John

WEB SERVICES Casey Bauer Hannah Mc. Mahon John Walls William Hunter Mary Daniel

What is a Web Service? F Collection of functions that are packaged as a single entity and published to the network for use by other programs. F Building blocks for creating open distributed systems, and allow companies and individuals to quickly and cheaply make their digital assets available worldwide. FBasically, a standardized way for multiple machines to communicate via Web-based applications.

Why was it developed? F To provide a reliable and more userfriendly way for different computers to communicate and access information across the Internet F A way to allow organizations to communicate data without intimate knowledge of each other’s IT systems behind the firewall.

How does a Web Service operate? F Extensible Markup Language (XML) FXML tags the Data F Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) FSOAP transfers the data (similar to an envelope) F Web Services Description Language (WSDL) FDescribes the services available F Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) FLists the businesses available

Microsoft and. NET FMicrosoft’s version of Web services is. NET F. NET uses the. NET platform which allows it to be used on any device, any time, any place. FOnly problem is that. NET does not have the ability to run on any operating system F (Haag and Cummings, Information Systems Essentials, 2006. )

Platforms F A platform may be any application server software that supports a Web Service. F Microsoft’s platform -. NET Platform FMicrosoft’s entire suite of tools, technologies, and services that support Microsoft’s vision of connected applications. F(Haag and Cummings, Information Systems Essentials, 2006. )

Existing Platforms F Microsoft. NET servers from Microsoft F Java Web Services Development Pack from Sun Microsystems F Dot. Gnu from GNU Project F Mono development platform Novell F Next. Axiom Service Runtime Environment from Next. Axiom Technology F Open. Edge Platform from Progress Software

Examples of Web Services F Yahoo! - maps, traffic F Google - web search, maps F Google. Earth F Fed Ex - shipment tracking F Amazon. com - search products, cart system, wish list, product information F Ebay - auction search, bidding, auction creation F Microsoft (MSN) - Virtual Earth

Advantages Provided by Web Services F Interoperability F Open standards and protocols F Low Barrier to Entry F Integrated Services F Reduced Costs F Distributed approach to application integration F Ubiquity F Industry Support

Challenges faced by Web Services F Discovery F Reliability F Security F Transactions F Scalability F Manageability F Accountability F Testing

Disadvantages of Web Services F Still in development F Poor performance compared to other distributed computing approaches F Text-based formats F Neglect toward conciseness of encoding and efficiency of parsing * Fortunately, all of these are temporary problems that are already being rectified.

Progressive Improvements F Most vendors have committed to the OASIS standards to implement the Quality of Service aspects of their products. F XML Infoset standard* F Binary representations promise to improve the wire efficiency of XML messaging

Benefits to Businesses F Time-saving possibilities F Peer-to-Peer Communication F Conversion of multiple web sites and services (Mash-up) F Expansion of Customer Base F Just In Time Inventory

Recap F What is a Web Service? F Features F Benefits F Future of Web Services