What Is A Web Service?
Web service is a solution used in systems integration and communication between different applications. With this technology it is possible that new applications can interact with those that already exist and that systems developed on different platforms are compatible. Web services are components that allow applications to send and receive data in XML format. Each application can have its own “language” which is translated into a universal language, the XML format.
For businesses, Web services can bring agility to the processes and efficiency in communication between supply chains and logistics. Any communication between systems is to be dynamic and especially safe because no human intervention.
Essentially, the Web service causes the features of the software application available on the network in a standardized way. Other technologies do the same thing, such as Internet browsers accessing the web pages available by using standard Internet technologies, HTTP and HTML. However, these technologies are not successful in the communication and application integration. There is a great motivation on the technology for Web Service allows different applications to communicate with each other and use different resources.
Using the Web Service technology, one can invoke another application to perform simple tasks or complex even though the two applications are in different systems and written in different languages. In other words, Web services make their resources available to any client application can operate and extract the features provided by the Web Service.
Web services are identified by a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), described and defined using XML (Extensible Markup Language). One of the reasons that make Web services attractive is the fact that this model is based on technology standards, particularly XML and HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). Web services are used to provide interactive services on the Web and can be accessed by other applications using, for example, the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).
The purpose of Web Services is the application to application communication over the Internet. This communication is made in order to facilitate EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) which means the integration of applications a company, i.e., interoperability between information exchanged in an organization in different applications such as electronic commerce with their customers and its suppliers.
This interaction is the information system of a company. And in addition to the interoperability between applications, EAI can define a work-flow between applications and can be an alternative to ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). With a work-flow you can optimize and manage processes and tasks in an organization.
The W3C and OASIS are the institutions responsible for standardization of Web Services. Companies like IBM and Microsoft, two of the largest in the technology sector, support the development of this standard.
According to the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) a Web Service is defined as: a software system designed to support interoperability between machines on the network. It has a descriptive in a machine-process-able format, specifically WSDL (WebService Description Language).
Other systems interact with the Web service using SOAP messages, typically over HTTP with XML in conjunction with other Web standards
Web Service Technologies
The foundations for building a Web service standards are XML and SOAP. The transport of data is normally performed via HTTP or HTTPS for secure connections (the standard does not specify the transport protocol). The data is transferred in XML format, encapsulated by SOAP protocol.
Security Of Web Services
Many companies feared in the past to provide features on the Internet for fear of exposing your data. But with the advent of Web services they can publish services in a simple and that are totally isolated from the database.
The security of Web Services is one of the weaknesses of this technology. The problem is not lack of security mechanisms but the lack of consensus on what should be the mechanism to be adapted for the Web Service technology, the most important issues in security are as follows:
- Authenticity (be sure that a transaction of Web Service took place between the server and client;
- Privacy (all messages exchanged between server and client are not intercepted by an unauthorized person), and
- Integrity (messages sent by both the server to the client, as otherwise, must remain unchanged).
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