Notes, information and links on Web Services and how they relate to Sakaibrary should go here.
Background Information
A Web Service is a software service that is available for public use. Public does not necessarily mean anyone can access the Web Service, nor does it mean that the service is free. Public implies that the Web Service is meant to be accessed from outside of the enterprise or software application in which it is provided. Furthermore, the public interfaces and bindings of the Web Service are openly defined in XML and need to be shared with anyone accessing the Web Service.
For example, weather.com has a Weather Web Service. The Weather Web Service is provided by weather.com and is hosted on thier machines, but can be used by anyone, from anywhere as long as they have licensed the use of the Weather Web Service. Weather.com publicly registers the interfaces and bindings necessary to communicate with the Weather Web Service. This allows users to know a number of things:
- what kinds of messages the user can send to the Weather Web Service and what kinds of messages the user can expect in return.
- what kinds of data the user can send in messages to the Weather Web Service and what kinds of data the user can expect in return messages from the Weather Web Service.
- how to package the messages the user sends to the Weather Web Service and how the return messages will be packaged.
Links
- Designing Web Services with the J2EE¿ 1.4 Platform - this Java Blueprints book provides a good background on Web Services: what it is, what it is useful for and how it can be implemented in Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.4 using technologies and APIs such as XML, SOAP, WSDL, JAX-RPC, etc.