What is a Web Service? – Definition, Components, Advantages, And More

Definition Web Service

Today many businesses need to communicate and exchange data with external applications to acquire web services that they do not have and satisfy the needs of their potential customers

A web service is a technology that uses a set of protocols and standards that serve to exchange data between applications.

This technology allows applications written in different languages ​​to be integrated and run on different platforms.

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Web services work with the following components

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

It is a protocol written in XML (Extensible Markup Language, translated as “Extensible Markup Language”) for the exchange of information between applications.

WSDL (Web Services Description Language)

It is an XML-based language to describe web services and how to access them. It is the regular format for describing a web service and is an integral part of the UDDI standard.

UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration)

It is an XML standard for describing, publishing, and finding web services. It is a directory where companies can register and search for web services. Directory of web service interfaces described in WSDL that communicates via SOAP.

Among the main advantages of web services we can highlight that

• Web services allow companies located in different geographic locations to combine services and software to provide integrated services quickly.
• They provide interoperability between software applications regardless of their properties or the platforms on which they install.
• The services are easy to understand (their content and operation) because they promote text-based standards and protocols.
• They can take advantage of firewall security systems (they rely on HTTP) without changing the filtering rules.
• They facilitate integration with business affiliates by being able to share internal services with a high degree of integration.
• Decrease the development time of the applications.
• Not linked to any Operating System or Language of Programming.
• They do not need to use browsers or the HTML specification language.
• It allows the change of the presentation logic in a simple way because its architecture offers the alternative of completely separating the presentation logic and the storage of the data.

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