Web Services
Web Services are the most talked about application of XML technology today, but what exactly are they, and how can they help you to do business better?
Let’s take a look....
What are web services?
Simply put, web services use industry standard protocols to integrate applications across a network (usually the web).
Using the standard XML data format web services allow different applications to dynamically share their data, and perhaps more significantly, to remotely invoke functionality from within other applications. With web services it doesn’t matter how those applications were built, what platform they are running on or what devices are used to access them – because web services communicate with each other in a standard language (XML) using universally accepted web protocols.
What can web services do for me?
Integrating your internal systems
One of the biggest headaches for any organisation’s IT department used to be getting different applications on different platforms to talk to each other effectively. Solutions had to be built around proprietary interfaces and data structures. They were costly, elaborate and labour intensive, and results were often less than ideal.
The advent of web services heralds a fundamental change in the way applications work together. Web services are inherently flexible and adaptable, and because they are standards based offer a much simpler integration path than traditional middleware.
All of this means that developers with a standard skill-set can provide flexible, robust integration solutions in a fraction of the time – which saves you money.
Looking further afield
As well as using web services to integrate your own systems, you can also make them available to your partners and/or customers, allowing them to access specific data or functionality. The bottom line is that web services make it easier for other people to do business with you… and that can only have a positive effect on your business.
Feel free to contact us for a more detailed exploration of web services technology.
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