Web Services Background
A Web Service is a method, or set of methods, that can be invoked over the Internet or other network. A Web Service and its clients exchange information using only standard non-proprietary protocols: SOAP and HTTP, for example. This means that Web Services are both platform and programming language neutral. A .NET or Java application can, for example, be a client of a Web Service coded in MVBasic. An MVBasic application can be a client of a Web Service coded using Java or .NET.
The following table lists the principal Web Service protocols along with their purposes and provides a brief description of each protocol:
| Protocol | Purpose | Description |
|---|---|---|
| HTTP | Transport | HyperText Transfer Protocol. Basic networking protocol used by the Internet. |
| SOAP | Packaging | Simple Object Access Protocol. An XML-based protocol for encoding messages sent between a Web Service method and a client. Encodes the arguments passed to a Web Service method as well as any values returned by the method to the client. |
| WSDL | Description | Web Service Description Language. An XML-based protocol for describing a Web Service. A WSDL document provides the location of the Web service, the signatures of a Web Services' methods as well as other information about the data types involved in the Web Service. Clients use the WSDL to generate proxy classes for accessing the Web Service. |
| UDDI | Discovery | Universal, Description, Discovery, and Integration. An XML-based protocol for creating Web Service registries that applications can use to locate Web Service descriptions. |
