Chapter 1. Web Services Overview

IN THIS CHAPTER

• What Is a Web Service?

• The Web Service Opportunity

• Trends in e-business

• Why Do We Need a Web Services Approach?

• Service-Oriented Architectures

• Web Services Interoperability Stacks

In this chapter, we will provide the basic terminology and set of concepts that put the remainder of the book into context. We will define what we mean by a Web service and describe situations in which Web services will play an important role. We will describe a simple framework, called service-oriented architecture , that helps structure the application of Web services technologies. We will also provide a framework, in the form of three "interoperability" stacks that position how the various Web services technologies such as Simple Object Access Protocol ( SOAP ) , Web Services Description Language ( WSDL ) , and Universal Description Discovery and Integration ( UDDI ) relate.

The rest of the book, then, is an elaboration of the basic concepts presented here.