Summary

This chapter dissected Web Services and the architectural pattern that Web Services use as a basis, the Service-Oriented Architecture pattern. The chapter began with a discussion on the generic service-oriented architecture and then showed how Web Services build out the basic architectural pattern and how Web Services function in a real environment. Although it did not discuss details of specific services in this chapter, it is apparent that Web Services play an important role in how your application will interact with the outside world.

The next two chapters continue to dissect Web Services and some of the generic patterns that Web Services leverage ” specifically , the Architecture Adapter pattern and the Service Directory pattern. These chapters stay relatively abstract so that you have a complete understanding of your application environment before diving into specific structures that you will build underneath Web Services and expose through Web Services.