Java and Web Services

Lately, some jargons are cycling in the web markets. The most prominent one is Web Services. This comes associated with a few other important words SOAP, UDDI, WSDL. Let us analyze what are these and what advantage do they give us in designing the web!

Foe beginners who want to know what is Web Services, the easiest defintion would be a software system that is used for system - system interaction.

When we say system interaction, its a very broad one. Any system to any system interaction. Yes! Irrespective of the platform, the language or the API, systems can talk to each other using Web Services. Thus Web Services are not restricted to any platform or language or for that matter anything.

Since I had been working with Java for a quite long time, I am more convenient with the object oriented technology. ie) Talking in terms of objects. Objects are sent/received from one end to the other in serialized forms or other forms. But when it comes to Web Services, the whole communication can be done through Extensible Markup Language (XML). However, these XML messages follow up a certain set of standards called SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol).

I would like to include the link to WebServices tutorial here for any technical reference.
Java Web Services

Let me give a more lively example for Web Services Architecture.
Web Services are like resumes submitted in a job portal. All the resumes are registered in a job portal. When a particular skill is required, the person/company searches for the appropriate skill set(in form of resume) in the registry which is the job portal here. If discovered, that particular individual is invoked for interview. And thereby since the skill matches, the individual is delivered/recruited in the firm.

Similarly, a web service can be developed and registered with the service registry which is called the UDDI. Thus there may be a lot many web services in the internet. These can be accessed by various clients(any application). So when a client requires any particular service, it has to simply search the registry, find the appropriate service, when found, invoke the same n get the service delivered to it. This is the whole work flow of a webservice.