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Using different standard protocols Web services help businesses to create sophisticated applications that integrate many features and content. Let us briefly discuss the uses of Web services now.

Web services (applications) can communicate which other without platform hassles. A Web service developed in Java in a sun ONE environment can communicate with the other which is running in a .NET environment. Using the standards, it’s easy to make them communicate. If applications can be integrated easily in this way, there are high possibilities to minimize the integration cost. Unlike buying and installing COM or Bean components Web services can run in the places where it is since they are XML based.

Without developing new infrastructure companies can access other Web services, and hence the development cost for newer applications are totally reduced. Without changing the legacy code doing e-Business can be made simple.

But there are risks at the other end. Unless the web service is worth to buy and easy to integrate, companies may face a tough time to sell them. As the customers are not paying for the technology, the integration part alone cannot boost the sales. The market for commercial web services should be in needy areas. For example, an online bookselling company can create a stock Web service which can be used its reseller applications.

The participants?

Let us now start discussing and understand the standards you need to know before creating a web service. The new connectivity standards SOAP, UDDI & WSDL and the matured standards XML and HTTP, web services can be created, implemented and can interact with other web services dynamically. Let us look at the participants who make web services here one by one briefly. The links can help you to study them in depth.

XML

The ideas behind Web services are starts with XML. XML — the eXtensible Markup Language — forms the backbone of the Web services to create and implement. XML is a markup language like HTML. XML has been designed to describe data and unlike HTML, XML tags are not predefined in XML. XML is self-describing which uses a Document Type Definition (DTD) to formally describe the data. XML was conceived in 1996 by a team chaired by Jon Bosak. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommended XML for standard, during January 1998. XML has been derived from Structured Generalized Markup Language (SGML) parent and HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is said to be an earlier cousin of XML.
Further Readings:

XML is a worldwide-agreed standard, and almost all the technical giants are into it.
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