What is a web service in plain English

Question

I ve been reading about  web services  here on SO  on Wikipedia  Google  etc   and I don t quite understand what they are   What is the plain English definition description   If I make a simple website using PHP that just  say  prints a random integer to the page    is this a  web service    If not  why not

User · Answer

A way of sending a message to invoke an operation on another computer. The difference between web services and previous methods is what gets sent over the wire is standardized at a higher level.

Old way: describe endians, encoding, port numbers, etc. Web Service: URL, XML

User · Answer

Web services are almost like normal a web page   The difference is that they are formatted to make it very easy for a program to pull data from the page  to the point of probably not using any HTML   They generally also are more reliable as to the consistency of the format  may use a different formal process to define the content such soap or raw xml  and there is often also a descriptor document that formally defines the structure for the data

User · Answer

A web service  as used by software developers  generally refers to an operation that is performed on a remote server and invoked using the XML SOAP specification  As with all definitions  there are nuances to it  but that s the most common use of the term

User · Answer

In over simplified terms a web service is something that provides data as a service over the http protocol   Granted that isn t alway the case    but it is close   Standard Web Services use The SOAP protocol which defines the communication and structure of messages  and XML is the data format   Web services are designed to allow applications built using different technologies to communicate with each other without issues   Examples of web services are things like Weather com providing weather information for that you can use on your site  or UPS providing a method to request shipping quotes or tracking of packages   Edit  Changed wording in reference to SOAP  as it is not always SOAP as I mentioned  but wanted to make it more clear   The key is providing data as a service  not a UI element

User · Answer

In over simplified terms a web service is something that provides data as a service over the http protocol   Granted that isn t alway the case    but it is close   Standard Web Services use The SOAP protocol which defines the communication and structure of messages  and XML is the data format   Web services are designed to allow applications built using different technologies to communicate with each other without issues   Examples of web services are things like Weather com providing weather information for that you can use on your site  or UPS providing a method to request shipping quotes or tracking of packages   Edit  Changed wording in reference to SOAP  as it is not always SOAP as I mentioned  but wanted to make it more clear   The key is providing data as a service  not a UI element

User · Answer

An operating system provides a GUI  and CLI  that you can interact with  It also provides an API that you can interact with programmatically   Similarly  a website provides HTML pages that you can interact with and may also provide an API that offers the same information and operations programmatically  Or those services may only be available via an API with no associated user interface

User · Answer

Simple way to explain web service is      A web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the World Wide Web  It can be called a process that a programmer uses to communicate with the server To invoke this process programmer can use SOAP etc Web services are built on top of open standards such as TCP IP  HTTP        The advantage of a webservice is  say you develop one piece of code in  net and you wish to use JAVA to consume this code  You can   interact directly with the abstracted layer and are unaware of what   technology was used to develop the code

User · Answer

Yes that is a simple web service   Web services are really nothing more than a request  response mechanism that allows a client to remotely access  modify data  There are formal standards for web services  SOAP  SOA etc   but your simple page is a service too   The main downside to printing it to a page is that your service would return HTML  Preferable data formats are JSON and XML  because most client frameworks  and server frameworks  are designed around using JSON and XML   So if you modified your service to return    lt RANDOM gt some random number lt  RANDOM gt    rather than    lt HEAD gt     lt  HEAD gt     lt BODY gt some random number lt  BODY gt    then it would be more useful to most clients

User · Answer

In over simplified terms a web service is something that provides data as a service over the http protocol   Granted that isn t alway the case    but it is close   Standard Web Services use The SOAP protocol which defines the communication and structure of messages  and XML is the data format   Web services are designed to allow applications built using different technologies to communicate with each other without issues   Examples of web services are things like Weather com providing weather information for that you can use on your site  or UPS providing a method to request shipping quotes or tracking of packages   Edit  Changed wording in reference to SOAP  as it is not always SOAP as I mentioned  but wanted to make it more clear   The key is providing data as a service  not a UI element

User · Answer

For most sites you have HTML pages that you visit when you use your browser  These are human-readable pages  once rendered in your browser  where a lot of data might be crammed together  because it makes sense for humans   Now imagine that someone else want to use some of that data  They could download your page and start filtering out all the  noise  to get the data they wanted  but most websites are not built in a way where data is 100  certain to be placed in the same spot for all elements  so in addition to being cumbersome it also becomes unreliable   Enter web services   A web service is something that a website chooses to offer to those who wish to read  update and or delete data from your website  You might call it a  backdoor  to your data  Instead of presenting the data as part of a webpage it is provided in a pre-determined way where some of the more popular are XML and JSON  There are several ways to communicate with a webservice  some use SOAP  others have REST ful web services  etc   What is common for all web services is that they are the machine-readable equivelant to the webpages the site otherwise offers  This means that others who wish to use the data can send a request to get certain data back that is easy to parse and use  Some sites may require you to provide a username password in the request  for sensitive data  while other sites allow anyone to extract whatever data they might need

User · Answer

Simplified  non-technical explanation   A web serivce allows a PROGRAM to talk to a web page  instead of using your browser to open a web page   Example  I can go to maps google com  and type in my home address  and see a map of where I live in my browser    But what if you were writing a computer program where you wanted to take an address and show a pretty map  just like Google maps   Well  you could write a whole new mapping program from scratch  OR you could call a web service that Google maps provides  send it the address  and it will return a graphical map of the location  which you can display in your program   There is a lot more to it  as some of the other posts go into  but the upshot is that it allows your application to either retrieve information FROM  or submit information TO some resource  Some other examples    You can use a web service to retrieve information about books at Amazon com You can use a similar web service to submit an order to Amazon com You could CREATE a web service to allow outside applications to find out about product information within your company you could create a web service to allow outside applications to submit orders to your company

User · Answer

Webservice is a technology by which two or more remote web applications interact with each other over network internet  It can be implemented using Java   net  PHP etc   Features of Web service -       Using web services two or more systems exchange data over network  Data are exchanged either using XML or JSON  Any web service has two parts Server end where the service is deployed and the client part where the service is accessed by its clients  Any web service can have multiple clients  When a travel portal is selling tickets of an airliner  Portal is client and the Airline is the server as it is selling its service  Web services can be synchronous or it can be asynchronous also A web application can interact with many web services but these web services are loosely coupled with their client web applications  That means any change in the parent application has little or no effect on the web services or vice versa  Web services can carry attachment document also like PDF  Word etc  with its XML payload  Java provides separate API for this type of web services  A web service always hides the internal complexity of the service to its clients  For an example  an airliner which is selling tickets via a third party portal is only gathering end user info via a web service and in return it is providing ticket  The portal which is selling ticket doesn t have to bother about the internal complexity of the airlines ticket reservation systems  A web service can be of fire and forget type or it can return something  Suppose  a web application just want to send some info to a third party application  The sender doesn t need any acknowledgement from the receiver  In this type of scenario we need a fire and forget type of web service

User · Answer

A web service differs from a web site in that a web service provides information consumable by software rather than humans  As a result  we are usually talking about exposed JSON  XML  or SOAP services    Web services are a key component in  mashups   Mashups are when information from many websites is automatically aggregated into a new and useful service  For example  there are sites that aggregate Google Maps with information about police reports to give you a graphical representation of crime in your area  Another type of mashup would be to take real stock data provided by another site and combine it with a fake trading application to create a stock-market  game     Web services are also used to provide news  see RSS   latest items added to a site  information on new products  podcasts  and other great features that make the modern web turn   Hope this helps

User · Answer

For most sites you have HTML pages that you visit when you use your browser  These are human-readable pages  once rendered in your browser  where a lot of data might be crammed together  because it makes sense for humans   Now imagine that someone else want to use some of that data  They could download your page and start filtering out all the  noise  to get the data they wanted  but most websites are not built in a way where data is 100  certain to be placed in the same spot for all elements  so in addition to being cumbersome it also becomes unreliable   Enter web services   A web service is something that a website chooses to offer to those who wish to read  update and or delete data from your website  You might call it a  backdoor  to your data  Instead of presenting the data as part of a webpage it is provided in a pre-determined way where some of the more popular are XML and JSON  There are several ways to communicate with a webservice  some use SOAP  others have REST ful web services  etc   What is common for all web services is that they are the machine-readable equivelant to the webpages the site otherwise offers  This means that others who wish to use the data can send a request to get certain data back that is easy to parse and use  Some sites may require you to provide a username password in the request  for sensitive data  while other sites allow anyone to extract whatever data they might need

User · Answer

Yes that is a simple web service   Web services are really nothing more than a request  response mechanism that allows a client to remotely access  modify data  There are formal standards for web services  SOAP  SOA etc   but your simple page is a service too   The main downside to printing it to a page is that your service would return HTML  Preferable data formats are JSON and XML  because most client frameworks  and server frameworks  are designed around using JSON and XML   So if you modified your service to return    lt RANDOM gt some random number lt  RANDOM gt    rather than    lt HEAD gt     lt  HEAD gt     lt BODY gt some random number lt  BODY gt    then it would be more useful to most clients

User · Answer

A web service differs from a web site in that a web service provides information consumable by software rather than humans  As a result  we are usually talking about exposed JSON  XML  or SOAP services    Web services are a key component in  mashups   Mashups are when information from many websites is automatically aggregated into a new and useful service  For example  there are sites that aggregate Google Maps with information about police reports to give you a graphical representation of crime in your area  Another type of mashup would be to take real stock data provided by another site and combine it with a fake trading application to create a stock-market  game     Web services are also used to provide news  see RSS   latest items added to a site  information on new products  podcasts  and other great features that make the modern web turn   Hope this helps

User · Answer

In simple words Web service could  be any simple program ex  add two numbers which should be published over the UDDI and can be consumed by another program WSDL will have the endpoint to locate the webservice and also the binding and port details

User · Answer

A simple definition would be an HTTP request that acts like a normal method call  i e   it accepts parameters and returns a structured result  usually XML  that can be deserialized into an object s

User · Answer

For most sites you have HTML pages that you visit when you use your browser  These are human-readable pages  once rendered in your browser  where a lot of data might be crammed together  because it makes sense for humans   Now imagine that someone else want to use some of that data  They could download your page and start filtering out all the  noise  to get the data they wanted  but most websites are not built in a way where data is 100  certain to be placed in the same spot for all elements  so in addition to being cumbersome it also becomes unreliable   Enter web services   A web service is something that a website chooses to offer to those who wish to read  update and or delete data from your website  You might call it a  backdoor  to your data  Instead of presenting the data as part of a webpage it is provided in a pre-determined way where some of the more popular are XML and JSON  There are several ways to communicate with a webservice  some use SOAP  others have REST ful web services  etc   What is common for all web services is that they are the machine-readable equivelant to the webpages the site otherwise offers  This means that others who wish to use the data can send a request to get certain data back that is easy to parse and use  Some sites may require you to provide a username password in the request  for sensitive data  while other sites allow anyone to extract whatever data they might need

User · Answer

A web service defines a contract of actions that a server will perform for you   The format and protocol doesn t really matter  but you should have some set definition of how the communication happens     In your example  it depends  if that is being used in another application that reads that number  yes it is service  otherwise  it s just a webpage with a number

User · Answer

A simple definition would be an HTTP request that acts like a normal method call  i e   it accepts parameters and returns a structured result  usually XML  that can be deserialized into an object s

User · Answer

An operating system provides a GUI  and CLI  that you can interact with  It also provides an API that you can interact with programmatically   Similarly  a website provides HTML pages that you can interact with and may also provide an API that offers the same information and operations programmatically  Or those services may only be available via an API with no associated user interface

User · Answer

The best plain English explanation comes from using an analogy    Web pages allow people to communicate and collaborate with each other  Web services allow programs to communicate and collaborate with each other    Your PHP example is a web service by that definition  because the output could be consumed by another program  But in reality  HTML screen-scraping is not a reliable or maintainable way of producing web services

User · Answer

A simple definition  A web service is a function that can be accessed by other programs over the web  HTTP     For example  when you create a website in PHP that outputs HTML  its target is the browser and by extension the human reading the page in the browser  A web service is not targeted at humans but rather at other programs   So your PHP site that generates a random integer could be a web service if it outputs the integer in a format that may be consumed by another program  It might be in an XML format or another format  as long as other programs can understand the output   The full definition is obviously more complex but you asked for plain English

User · Answer

Web services are almost like normal a web page   The difference is that they are formatted to make it very easy for a program to pull data from the page  to the point of probably not using any HTML   They generally also are more reliable as to the consistency of the format  may use a different formal process to define the content such soap or raw xml  and there is often also a descriptor document that formally defines the structure for the data

User · Answer

A simple definition  A web service is a function that can be accessed by other programs over the web  HTTP     For example  when you create a website in PHP that outputs HTML  its target is the browser and by extension the human reading the page in the browser  A web service is not targeted at humans but rather at other programs   So your PHP site that generates a random integer could be a web service if it outputs the integer in a format that may be consumed by another program  It might be in an XML format or another format  as long as other programs can understand the output   The full definition is obviously more complex but you asked for plain English

User · Answer

Web Service is like a medium of commuication between two unrelated programs  The programs use a specified protocol Usually Simple Object Access Protocol  SOAP   as medium to understand what REQUEST RESPONCE they are to process execute on there respective end

User · Answer

A simple definition  A web service is a function that can be accessed by other programs over the web  HTTP     For example  when you create a website in PHP that outputs HTML  its target is the browser and by extension the human reading the page in the browser  A web service is not targeted at humans but rather at other programs   So your PHP site that generates a random integer could be a web service if it outputs the integer in a format that may be consumed by another program  It might be in an XML format or another format  as long as other programs can understand the output   The full definition is obviously more complex but you asked for plain English

User · Answer

For most sites you have HTML pages that you visit when you use your browser  These are human-readable pages  once rendered in your browser  where a lot of data might be crammed together  because it makes sense for humans   Now imagine that someone else want to use some of that data  They could download your page and start filtering out all the  noise  to get the data they wanted  but most websites are not built in a way where data is 100  certain to be placed in the same spot for all elements  so in addition to being cumbersome it also becomes unreliable   Enter web services   A web service is something that a website chooses to offer to those who wish to read  update and or delete data from your website  You might call it a  backdoor  to your data  Instead of presenting the data as part of a webpage it is provided in a pre-determined way where some of the more popular are XML and JSON  There are several ways to communicate with a webservice  some use SOAP  others have REST ful web services  etc   What is common for all web services is that they are the machine-readable equivelant to the webpages the site otherwise offers  This means that others who wish to use the data can send a request to get certain data back that is easy to parse and use  Some sites may require you to provide a username password in the request  for sensitive data  while other sites allow anyone to extract whatever data they might need

User · Answer

Without prejudice to other definitions I would say that a web service is software system that allows for inter-operable machine-to-machine   application-to-application interaction over a network  This generic definitions would also help consider REST architectures to be a web service as they provide similar functionality albeit being an architectural style unlike the SOAP which is a fully defined protocol

User · Answer

Web Service  is composed of two words  Web  and  Service   What is  Web    Web  means  World Wide Web    Service  for what  Not for Human if so it s  Web Page  such as text images video etc  It s for Programs to communicate through the Internet using the same technology the  Web  used such as TCP HTTP etc   Service  also means it provides some functions like the  Service Layer  in CRUD  There are mainly two types  1  SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol  2  RESTful Representational state transfer

User · Answer

A web service defines a contract of actions that a server will perform for you   The format and protocol doesn t really matter  but you should have some set definition of how the communication happens     In your example  it depends  if that is being used in another application that reads that number  yes it is service  otherwise  it s just a webpage with a number

User · Answer

Simplified  non-technical explanation   A web serivce allows a PROGRAM to talk to a web page  instead of using your browser to open a web page   Example  I can go to maps google com  and type in my home address  and see a map of where I live in my browser    But what if you were writing a computer program where you wanted to take an address and show a pretty map  just like Google maps   Well  you could write a whole new mapping program from scratch  OR you could call a web service that Google maps provides  send it the address  and it will return a graphical map of the location  which you can display in your program   There is a lot more to it  as some of the other posts go into  but the upshot is that it allows your application to either retrieve information FROM  or submit information TO some resource  Some other examples    You can use a web service to retrieve information about books at Amazon com You can use a similar web service to submit an order to Amazon com You could CREATE a web service to allow outside applications to find out about product information within your company you could create a web service to allow outside applications to submit orders to your company

User · Answer

In simple words Web service could  be any simple program ex  add two numbers which should be published over the UDDI and can be consumed by another program WSDL will have the endpoint to locate the webservice and also the binding and port details

User · Answer

Well   As  Vincent Ramdhanie has said that a web service is not meant to be seen   consumed by end user but another program  So technically logic in your program will be   In case of acting as a normal program  user on website - gt  HTML JS JQuery etc - gt  give me a random number - gt ur program   Now   ur program - gt  generate random number - gt  generate HTML and encapsulate o p - gt  go back to user  but in case of web service the flow changes a little   user - gt  my application - gt  XML JSON some other format - gt  give me a random number - gt ur program Now   ur program - gt  generate random number - gt  generate XML JSON some other format - gt  my application - gt  generate HTML and encapsulate o p - gt  go back to user  Hope this helps

User · Answer

An operating system provides a GUI  and CLI  that you can interact with  It also provides an API that you can interact with programmatically   Similarly  a website provides HTML pages that you can interact with and may also provide an API that offers the same information and operations programmatically  Or those services may only be available via an API with no associated user interface

User · Answer

A simple definition would be an HTTP request that acts like a normal method call  i e   it accepts parameters and returns a structured result  usually XML  that can be deserialized into an object s

User · Answer

A way of sending a message to invoke an operation on another computer. The difference between web services and previous methods is what gets sent over the wire is standardized at a higher level.

Old way: describe endians, encoding, port numbers, etc. Web Service: URL, XML

User · Answer

Without prejudice to other definitions I would say that a web service is software system that allows for inter-operable machine-to-machine   application-to-application interaction over a network  This generic definitions would also help consider REST architectures to be a web service as they provide similar functionality albeit being an architectural style unlike the SOAP which is a fully defined protocol

User · Answer

An operating system provides a GUI  and CLI  that you can interact with  It also provides an API that you can interact with programmatically   Similarly  a website provides HTML pages that you can interact with and may also provide an API that offers the same information and operations programmatically  Or those services may only be available via an API with no associated user interface

User · Answer

Web services are almost like normal a web page   The difference is that they are formatted to make it very easy for a program to pull data from the page  to the point of probably not using any HTML   They generally also are more reliable as to the consistency of the format  may use a different formal process to define the content such soap or raw xml  and there is often also a descriptor document that formally defines the structure for the data

User · Answer

The best plain English explanation comes from using an analogy    Web pages allow people to communicate and collaborate with each other  Web services allow programs to communicate and collaborate with each other    Your PHP example is a web service by that definition  because the output could be consumed by another program  But in reality  HTML screen-scraping is not a reliable or maintainable way of producing web services

User · Answer

A web service differs from a web site in that a web service provides information consumable by software rather than humans  As a result  we are usually talking about exposed JSON  XML  or SOAP services    Web services are a key component in  mashups   Mashups are when information from many websites is automatically aggregated into a new and useful service  For example  there are sites that aggregate Google Maps with information about police reports to give you a graphical representation of crime in your area  Another type of mashup would be to take real stock data provided by another site and combine it with a fake trading application to create a stock-market  game     Web services are also used to provide news  see RSS   latest items added to a site  information on new products  podcasts  and other great features that make the modern web turn   Hope this helps

User · Answer

A web service defines a contract of actions that a server will perform for you   The format and protocol doesn t really matter  but you should have some set definition of how the communication happens     In your example  it depends  if that is being used in another application that reads that number  yes it is service  otherwise  it s just a webpage with a number

User · Answer

A web service is a collection of open protocols and standards used for exchanging data between applications or systems  Software applications written in various programming languages and running on various platforms can use web services to exchange data over computer networks like the Internet in a manner similar to inter-process communication on a single computer  This interoperability  e g   between Java and Python  or Windows and Linux applications  is due to the use of open standards  XML  SOAP  HTTP    All the standard Web Services works using following components    SOAP  Simple Object Access Protocol  UDDI  Universal Description  Discovery and Integration  WSDL  Web Services Description Language    It works somewhat like this    The client program bundles the account registration information into a SOAP message  This SOAP message is sent to the Web Service as the body of an HTTP POST request  The Web Service unpacks the SOAP request and converts it into a command that the application can understand   The application processes the information as required and responds with a new unique account number for that customer  Next  the Web Service packages up the response into another SOAP message  which it sends back to the client program in response to its HTTP request  The client program unpacks the SOAP message to obtain the results of the account registration process

User · Answer

In over simplified terms a web service is something that provides data as a service over the http protocol   Granted that isn t alway the case    but it is close   Standard Web Services use The SOAP protocol which defines the communication and structure of messages  and XML is the data format   Web services are designed to allow applications built using different technologies to communicate with each other without issues   Examples of web services are things like Weather com providing weather information for that you can use on your site  or UPS providing a method to request shipping quotes or tracking of packages   Edit  Changed wording in reference to SOAP  as it is not always SOAP as I mentioned  but wanted to make it more clear   The key is providing data as a service  not a UI element

User · Answer

The best plain English explanation comes from using an analogy    Web pages allow people to communicate and collaborate with each other  Web services allow programs to communicate and collaborate with each other    Your PHP example is a web service by that definition  because the output could be consumed by another program  But in reality  HTML screen-scraping is not a reliable or maintainable way of producing web services

User · Answer

Yes that is a simple web service   Web services are really nothing more than a request  response mechanism that allows a client to remotely access  modify data  There are formal standards for web services  SOAP  SOA etc   but your simple page is a service too   The main downside to printing it to a page is that your service would return HTML  Preferable data formats are JSON and XML  because most client frameworks  and server frameworks  are designed around using JSON and XML   So if you modified your service to return    lt RANDOM gt some random number lt  RANDOM gt    rather than    lt HEAD gt     lt  HEAD gt     lt BODY gt some random number lt  BODY gt    then it would be more useful to most clients

User · Answer

A web service differs from a web site in that a web service provides information consumable by software rather than humans  As a result  we are usually talking about exposed JSON  XML  or SOAP services    Web services are a key component in  mashups   Mashups are when information from many websites is automatically aggregated into a new and useful service  For example  there are sites that aggregate Google Maps with information about police reports to give you a graphical representation of crime in your area  Another type of mashup would be to take real stock data provided by another site and combine it with a fake trading application to create a stock-market  game     Web services are also used to provide news  see RSS   latest items added to a site  information on new products  podcasts  and other great features that make the modern web turn   Hope this helps

User · Answer

Web Service is like a medium of commuication between two unrelated programs  The programs use a specified protocol Usually Simple Object Access Protocol  SOAP   as medium to understand what REQUEST RESPONCE they are to process execute on there respective end

User · Answer

Web Service  is composed of two words  Web  and  Service   What is  Web    Web  means  World Wide Web    Service  for what  Not for Human if so it s  Web Page  such as text images video etc  It s for Programs to communicate through the Internet using the same technology the  Web  used such as TCP HTTP etc   Service  also means it provides some functions like the  Service Layer  in CRUD  There are mainly two types  1  SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol  2  RESTful Representational state transfer

User · Answer

A web service  as used by software developers  generally refers to an operation that is performed on a remote server and invoked using the XML SOAP specification  As with all definitions  there are nuances to it  but that s the most common use of the term

User · Answer

Yes that is a simple web service   Web services are really nothing more than a request  response mechanism that allows a client to remotely access  modify data  There are formal standards for web services  SOAP  SOA etc   but your simple page is a service too   The main downside to printing it to a page is that your service would return HTML  Preferable data formats are JSON and XML  because most client frameworks  and server frameworks  are designed around using JSON and XML   So if you modified your service to return    lt RANDOM gt some random number lt  RANDOM gt    rather than    lt HEAD gt     lt  HEAD gt     lt BODY gt some random number lt  BODY gt    then it would be more useful to most clients

User · Answer

Simplified  non-technical explanation   A web serivce allows a PROGRAM to talk to a web page  instead of using your browser to open a web page   Example  I can go to maps google com  and type in my home address  and see a map of where I live in my browser    But what if you were writing a computer program where you wanted to take an address and show a pretty map  just like Google maps   Well  you could write a whole new mapping program from scratch  OR you could call a web service that Google maps provides  send it the address  and it will return a graphical map of the location  which you can display in your program   There is a lot more to it  as some of the other posts go into  but the upshot is that it allows your application to either retrieve information FROM  or submit information TO some resource  Some other examples    You can use a web service to retrieve information about books at Amazon com You can use a similar web service to submit an order to Amazon com You could CREATE a web service to allow outside applications to find out about product information within your company you could create a web service to allow outside applications to submit orders to your company

User · Answer

Well   As  Vincent Ramdhanie has said that a web service is not meant to be seen   consumed by end user but another program  So technically logic in your program will be   In case of acting as a normal program  user on website - gt  HTML JS JQuery etc - gt  give me a random number - gt ur program   Now   ur program - gt  generate random number - gt  generate HTML and encapsulate o p - gt  go back to user  but in case of web service the flow changes a little   user - gt  my application - gt  XML JSON some other format - gt  give me a random number - gt ur program Now   ur program - gt  generate random number - gt  generate XML JSON some other format - gt  my application - gt  generate HTML and encapsulate o p - gt  go back to user  Hope this helps

User · Answer

A web service defines a contract of actions that a server will perform for you   The format and protocol doesn t really matter  but you should have some set definition of how the communication happens     In your example  it depends  if that is being used in another application that reads that number  yes it is service  otherwise  it s just a webpage with a number

User · Answer

Web services are almost like normal a web page   The difference is that they are formatted to make it very easy for a program to pull data from the page  to the point of probably not using any HTML   They generally also are more reliable as to the consistency of the format  may use a different formal process to define the content such soap or raw xml  and there is often also a descriptor document that formally defines the structure for the data

User · Answer

The best plain English explanation comes from using an analogy    Web pages allow people to communicate and collaborate with each other  Web services allow programs to communicate and collaborate with each other    Your PHP example is a web service by that definition  because the output could be consumed by another program  But in reality  HTML screen-scraping is not a reliable or maintainable way of producing web services

User · Answer

A web service  as used by software developers  generally refers to an operation that is performed on a remote server and invoked using the XML SOAP specification  As with all definitions  there are nuances to it  but that s the most common use of the term

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A web service  as used by software developers  generally refers to an operation that is performed on a remote server and invoked using the XML SOAP specification  As with all definitions  there are nuances to it  but that s the most common use of the term

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Webservice is a technology by which two or more remote web applications interact with each other over network internet  It can be implemented using Java   net  PHP etc   Features of Web service -       Using web services two or more systems exchange data over network  Data are exchanged either using XML or JSON  Any web service has two parts Server end where the service is deployed and the client part where the service is accessed by its clients  Any web service can have multiple clients  When a travel portal is selling tickets of an airliner  Portal is client and the Airline is the server as it is selling its service  Web services can be synchronous or it can be asynchronous also A web application can interact with many web services but these web services are loosely coupled with their client web applications  That means any change in the parent application has little or no effect on the web services or vice versa  Web services can carry attachment document also like PDF  Word etc  with its XML payload  Java provides separate API for this type of web services  A web service always hides the internal complexity of the service to its clients  For an example  an airliner which is selling tickets via a third party portal is only gathering end user info via a web service and in return it is providing ticket  The portal which is selling ticket doesn t have to bother about the internal complexity of the airlines ticket reservation systems  A web service can be of fire and forget type or it can return something  Suppose  a web application just want to send some info to a third party application  The sender doesn t need any acknowledgement from the receiver  In this type of scenario we need a fire and forget type of web service

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Simplified  non-technical explanation   A web serivce allows a PROGRAM to talk to a web page  instead of using your browser to open a web page   Example  I can go to maps google com  and type in my home address  and see a map of where I live in my browser    But what if you were writing a computer program where you wanted to take an address and show a pretty map  just like Google maps   Well  you could write a whole new mapping program from scratch  OR you could call a web service that Google maps provides  send it the address  and it will return a graphical map of the location  which you can display in your program   There is a lot more to it  as some of the other posts go into  but the upshot is that it allows your application to either retrieve information FROM  or submit information TO some resource  Some other examples    You can use a web service to retrieve information about books at Amazon com You can use a similar web service to submit an order to Amazon com You could CREATE a web service to allow outside applications to find out about product information within your company you could create a web service to allow outside applications to submit orders to your company

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A simple definition  A web service is a function that can be accessed by other programs over the web  HTTP     For example  when you create a website in PHP that outputs HTML  its target is the browser and by extension the human reading the page in the browser  A web service is not targeted at humans but rather at other programs   So your PHP site that generates a random integer could be a web service if it outputs the integer in a format that may be consumed by another program  It might be in an XML format or another format  as long as other programs can understand the output   The full definition is obviously more complex but you asked for plain English

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A simple definition would be an HTTP request that acts like a normal method call  i e   it accepts parameters and returns a structured result  usually XML  that can be deserialized into an object s

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Simple way to explain web service is      A web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the World Wide Web  It can be called a process that a programmer uses to communicate with the server To invoke this process programmer can use SOAP etc Web services are built on top of open standards such as TCP IP  HTTP        The advantage of a webservice is  say you develop one piece of code in  net and you wish to use JAVA to consume this code  You can   interact directly with the abstracted layer and are unaware of what   technology was used to develop the code

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A web service is a collection of open protocols and standards used for exchanging data between applications or systems  Software applications written in various programming languages and running on various platforms can use web services to exchange data over computer networks like the Internet in a manner similar to inter-process communication on a single computer  This interoperability  e g   between Java and Python  or Windows and Linux applications  is due to the use of open standards  XML  SOAP  HTTP    All the standard Web Services works using following components    SOAP  Simple Object Access Protocol  UDDI  Universal Description  Discovery and Integration  WSDL  Web Services Description Language    It works somewhat like this    The client program bundles the account registration information into a SOAP message  This SOAP message is sent to the Web Service as the body of an HTTP POST request  The Web Service unpacks the SOAP request and converts it into a command that the application can understand   The application processes the information as required and responds with a new unique account number for that customer  Next  the Web Service packages up the response into another SOAP message  which it sends back to the client program in response to its HTTP request  The client program unpacks the SOAP message to obtain the results of the account registration process

[web-services] What is a "web service" in plain English?

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