Abstract
This chapter presents an overview of service-oriented architecture and web technologies with the objective of presenting challenging issues concerned with various aspects of integrating heterogeneous web applications.
TopBackground Study
The journey of Web service architecture can be traced from the period of Remote Procedure Call (RPC) mechanism in Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) which started in 1990s as a framework for software development. This includes distributed file system for communication purpose among different software applications. DCE originated from UNIX environment while Microsoft came up with its version of implementation termed as MSRPC. RPC was designed for the purpose of distributed computing which allows computing among different physical devices whereas Microsoft version introduces RPC for supporting inter process communication within a single device.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Web Services: A web service is any bit of programming that makes it accessible over the web and uses an existing XML informing framework. Its main goal is interoperability between enterprises.
SOA: Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a set of principles, policies, standards, guidelines, agreements, and requirements for shared infrastructure. SOA is an information sharing architecture; it increases abstraction and autonomy.
XML: XML stands for extensible mark-up language. XML is a tool for data transportation and data storage in platform- and language-neutral way. XML plays an important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the web. XML is not completely a computer language; it is very much human readable and user extensible.
SOAP: Simple object access protocol (SOAP) is an XML-based informing convention for trading data among enterprise applications. SOAP aids in intercommunication between enterprise web applications that use web services.
Enterprise Applications: Applications made for enterprises (it includes small, medium, or large-scale enterprises) are called enterprise applications.
WSDL: Web services description language (WSDL) is a configuration for portraying a web service’s interface. The WSDL record is the postcard, which has the address of the web and thus benefits all the usefulness that the customer needs.