Have you ever used a HTML form that posted information to a web site? When you clicked submit on the form you're in effect sending information to the web server via form variables right? Text fields, Text area's sometimes hidden fields etc...In return you receive a results page in HTML for example telling you what transpired.
Well the concept of a Web Service, in its simplest form, is very much the same. The difference is that a web site exposing a Web Service allows *other* applications or web sites to post information to it rather than just a person navigating a site...but instead of receiving a results page, you receive the response in it's native form. Just data. This data can be a string variable "Hello World" or it could be a number...Even complex types are possible. In fact, I could setup a Web Service on my site called "customers.cfc" that would enable you to retrieve a Coldfusion query recordset over the Internet! This data can then be used within your own application as if it were derived locally in your environment. Pretty neat! Each Web Service may expose all kinds of different functionality...let's take my original example. http://www.mydomain.com/customers.cfc That's the location of my Coldfusion component that's exposing these "services" as a built in feature of Coldfusion MX. Now to access it's functionality from a remote application (say you have an application on your end) and you want to a list of my customers you would use the new CF tag like so within ur site: <cfinvoke method="getCustomers" returnvariable="myQueryResult" webservice="http://www.mydomain.com/customers.cfc?WSDL";> <cdump var="#myQueryResult#"> Now when your CFM template executes (if you're running MX that is) your application will make a call over the Internet to my Web Service and will ask it to run a command (or method) called "getCustomers". Now I've got my service setup so that command returns a database query to the calling client (in this case that's your application). My service will send the database query result back over the net to you...and now it's available in your application as any old query object...and you can cfdump it, cfloop or just plain cfoutput if you like! So in summary, Web Services allow applications to exchange information with each other...even complex data structures...over the Internet...Now the kicker here is that ColdfusionMX isn't the only platform that supports this...You can use your CFMX to call web services on .NET applications, Perl, Java...you name it....That's what makes it a powerful concept... A very simplified example of what you can do...but I hope that helps! I've got a basic "how-to" article on MM's site if you want to take a gander... http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/mx/coldfusion/articles/webservices.pdf Cheers! Stace -----Original Message----- From: Paul Giesenhagen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2002 2:44 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Web Services Ok, first I must say that I have a hard time asking this question, so I ask it with my head bowed. What is "Web Services" I asked a few people who I thought might know and they really couldn't put a finger on it. Is Web Services a word, an it or what... I have seen it here and there all over the place and well I just feel out of touch (which I probably am). Could someone provide the info on it? Thanks Paul Giesenhagen QuillDesign ______________________________________________________________________ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
