Steve White wrote:
On 7.08.08, Joel Schneider wrote:
Steve White wrote:
A user asked me, what are Web Services?
As mentioned in the Wikipedia article, the first sentence of the W3C
definition for "web service" [1] looks like a reasonable short
description of the general concept:
A Web service is a software system designed to support
interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a
network.
How does that statement distinguish Web Services from any other communication
mechanism between machines?
It's like this as a definition of "woman":
A woman is an animal.
Ok, a proper definition of web service should also mention the usage of
web protocols such as HTTP and standards such as URIs.
However, for the broad definition of web service, I think SOAP and WSDL
are not strictly required (e.g. RESTful services).
Best regards,
Joel
