Abstract

Web services aim to provide application-to-application interoperability. Messages are exchanged between two parties called service provider and service requestor. The messages are described in an abstract way and then bound to a concrete network protocol and message format. The message exchange between provider and requester results in the invocation of an operation. A collection of operations represents an interface to the service. This interface is then bound to a concrete protocol and message format via one or more bindings. The interface definition and operation implementation are the responsibility of the service providers.