mithilesh kumar singh

Web Service

What is Web Service?

Web Service is an application that is designed to interact directly with other applications over the internet. In other way, Web Services are means for interacting with objects over the Internet. The Web service consumers are able to invoke method calls on remote objects by using SOAP and HTTP over the Web. Web Service is language independent and Web Services communicate by using standard web protocols and data formats, such as

1) HTTP

2) XML

3) SOAP

Advantages of Web Service

->Web Service messages are formatted as XML.

->This is a standard way for communication between two incompatible system. 

-> This message is sent via HTTP, so that they can reach to any machine on the internet without being blocked by firewall.

->Web Services are supported on a wide range of platforms.

->A client makes a request to a web service, the web service returns the result, and the connection is closed. There is no permanent connection. This makes it easy to scale up and support many clients at a time.

->Firewalls can pose a challenge for distributed object technologies. The only thing that almost always gets through firewalls is HTTP traffic on ports 80 and 443. Because web services use HTTP, they can pass through firewalls without explicit configuration.

Examples for Web Service

Weather Reporting: We can use Weather Reporting web service to display weather information in our personal website.

Stock Quote: We can display latest update of Share market with Stock Quote on our web site.

News Headline: We can display latest news update by using News Headline Web Service in your website.