1. What are web services and why are they called so?
Web services are business process interfaces. Each web service is a
point of interaction to either give inputs/receive outputs from a business
process. The web server provides the web service. They run in the background
and wait for clients to connect to them. Basically it frees the programmer
of writing code for the web service to listen to multiple clients. They
are URL addressable and can be invoked by any browser by just typing
the path to the web service. Web services use HTTP protocol to communicate
with clients.
2. Where do web services stand in an e-business infrastructure?
Any e-business infrastructure involves multiple applications working across
networks to interact and make e-business transactions. Web services promise
to make the interaction between applications smooth, reliable, well integrated
and open.
3. What kind of applications can be a web service?
Any application that needs to pass on its outputs to another application/receive
inputs from another application can benefit from being a web service.
4. Web services can discover each other over
the Internet. How many web services can run together and how well do
they integrate with systems and applications over the Internet?
Because of the reach and size of the Internet the number of web services
is theoretically speaking endless - practically it is limited only by
the bandwidth and reliability of the servers on the Internet.
5. Web services are known to change a basic
fact of the Internet. They allow machines to interact and communicate
directly with one another and eliminate the need for human intervention.
Is this true?
The open and common standards used by Web Services ensure that any kind
of application can interact with a web service. Traditionally, browsers
provided information from the Internet in a visual format that only humans
could make sense of. With Web services the information is provided in
a computer understandable format and the applications can make sense of
this information and take decisions based on its programmed intelligence.
This really makes things faster and predictable and paves the way for
virtual applications across the Internet.
6. Web services are supported by Microsoft's
.NET initiative. Does this involve looking at the Internet in a new
way?
Microsoft's .NET initiative is a platform for the tools and servers
required in the Web services world to come together. The .NET platform
promises to help build, own and operate the Web services of tomorrow
easily.
7. What are the different avenues that a company
can explore to exploit using this technology?
Companies need to get in touch with consultants and have their applications
optimised around business processes to leverage this technology to their
advantage. It calls for a new way of designing applications over the
web and for a new way to build solutions of the future. At Stylus Systems,
we offer similar consultancy services that help businesses leverage
the .NET Framework into their organizations.
8. How can web services be implemented in a
strategic manner?
Key business processes can be made available as web services and this
can help companies to build the web applications that can strategically
leverage their business needs over the Internet. Once a web service
is deployed, other applications or web services can interface with it
and also call upon it easily. Using a basic platform that is HTML and
XML based, they can run practically anywhere on the net. XML being a
meta language that helps disparate systems exchange data, almost any
application in any business becomes a potential candidate for web services.
9. Does it make sense to convert a portion
of a large application to web services?
Web enabling existing applications is a key initiative that can help
in the quick transition to web services. Applications that enable key
business processes can be easily converted to web services that can
help companies to leverage this technology quickly.
10. Can we say that Web services promise a
future where multiple web services are offered by various organizations
and act together to establish industry-wide integration?
Yes, the future will be industry wide specialized web services that
will emerge to provide reliable, fast and economical services that integrate
together as a custom application to serve the needs of a particular
client/organization.
11. What role do they play in e-market places
and online stores? How will their snap-in-nature, just-in-time integration
features help here?
Online stores will use web services to take care of their inventory
management and enable to provide just-in-time inventory maintenance.
Suppliers have production cycles that are made to order. Customers will
have customized order placement. E-market places will act in very much
the ways the real marker place does today - competition will breed the
best of the lot survival. Suppliers, customers and retailers will locate
one another at e-markets and procure, sell and transact in ways that
are seamless and reliable using web services. Web services bring significant
financial rewards and a competitive advantage to a company.
12. What about companies that want to port
their existing systems to the net?
Legacy applications in an organization can be exposed to the net using
web services. They can be wrapped with web service wrappers to be web
services, thus streamlining business processes and reducing the time
delays and costs.
13. How can a developer save time by leveraging
a web service?
Think of the web as a storehouse of components that are available for
you to integrate and build your applications. The Developer can then
choose his web services and integrate them and build applications to
server the specific needs of the clients. Each web service is like a
black box component that provides a specific functionality/business
process. Developers will soon be just integrating web services and coding
for aspects like the reliability and availability of these applications
too. With web services readily available software modules can be integrated
into existing applications. They don't need reinvention, end result
being a faster time to develop applications.
Useful Links:
An
interesting case study on web services
A
site devoted to web services and the latest news
A
technical article that describes web services and the underlying technology
IBM
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