SOA Tutorials: Introduction To Web Services

WEB Services:

These are the web applications typically business objects that execute a unit of work. It is platform and programming language independent. For example Telephone bill payment system, Hotel book system. It is like classes, Interfaces or structures which provide black box functionality to the client/consumer.

There are two components of a web service based on the web service architecture.

• Service provider or publisher: The service provider publishes the service as web service so that the service is available to the external world to use.
  

• Service requester or consumer: Service requestor or consumer utilizes the available web service.
  

How it works:

• The service provider or publisher creates the web service.

• Now, Service provider describes the web service using a Web Service Description Language (WSDL) which gives the information of what are the operations and the location of the Web service.
  

• Then the publisher registers the web service using Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) so that it is available to consumers.
  

• Finally, requester creates an application to bind the registered service and utilize it.