Why You Should Use Web Services

There are two main reasons to use web services, both remarkably straightforward: someone else has information you require, or you have information you wish to provide to others. When planning a new web service, remember that servers can either provide or accept information. Remember that web services can provide any level of security, from a completely open service open to all who request it, to a private service with transfers happening over SSL and client-side certificates to validate identities.

Convincing the Boss

Here are a few more tidbits that should help convince the boss (or you) that web services are a route to look into:

Web services make use of technology you already have deployed — you already have a web server, you already have a database, and so on. Why not provide another way to access the data?
Web services fit into the security scheme you are already employing . Careful deployment will keep security concerns in line with regular web access.
Technically savvy users will find a way to access the information they desire . Without web services they will need to resort to methods like screen scraping, which is more difficult to control and can be unreliable (and providing unreliable access to your information is worse than providing none at all).
Web services can help manage costs; easy integration with companies (like FedEx) that offer services to you can result in lower variable costs for your transactions.
Web services will allow your business to scale; allowing clients to integrate their systems with yours will help encourage continued relationships, and avoid devoting resources to creating systems for specific clients.

Summary

This chapter answered some basic questions about web services that should allow you to do the following:

Explain what web services are and how they work
See the value in utilizing web services in your own projects
Convince others that it's definitely worth the effort to build and use web services

In the next chapter, you start working with web feeds, a simple but useful form of web services. As you progress through the book, you'll start getting into more complex uses of web services and eventually create your own web service APIs.

Chapter 2: Introducing Web Feeds

Overview

Web feeds (or simply feeds) are a quickly growing, easy-to-deploy technology that allows both providers and users of the feed easy access to the relevant information. Feeds are regularly updated eXtensible Markup Language (XML) documents, generally containing some basic information about the site or group offering the feed, followed by a group of items containing whatever information the feed producers want to disseminate.

Of course, there are a whole host of different uses for web feeds. For example, you could stick a work- related feed onto your intranet site to keep employees up to date on industry news, or you could combine the feeds from various blogs and websites to create a personal start page containing all the sites you read in a condensed format. Just find the feeds you're interested in and away you go!

Obviously, having the ability to view the latest information, in a given subject area and in an easily readable format, can be a huge bonus for a host of businesses and people. Accordingly, this chapter looks at the following:

What web feeds are
Important considerations when using feeds
Key differences between HTML and XML
Who provides web feeds
What software uses web feeds

You might be asking yourself whether there are other ways to get information from the Web. Well, in general, feeds are the only reliable (and legal) way to obtain many types of information from other websites in an automated manner. Other methods , such as scraping HTML pages, are not only frowned upon, but may be illegal (if you choose to present this information to others).

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