Web Services Course And Certification

What are Web Services?

A Web Service is any piece of computer software that makes itself available over the internet to serve other computers or clients and uses a standardized XML messaging system. XML is used to encode all the communications that are made to a web service. For example, a client would invoke a web service by sending a message in XML format, then waits for a similar and corresponding XML response.

As all communication from the server to the client is in XML format, web services are not tied to any operating system or any specific programming language i.e, Java can communicate with Perl; Windows applications can communicate directly with Unix software.

Web Services are designed to be self-contained, distributed, modular dynamic applications that can be described, published, invoked or located over the network to develop processes, products, and supply chains. These applications can either be local, distributed, or web-based. Web services are developed on top of open standards such as HTTP, TCP/IP, HTML, Java, and XML.

Web Services are XML-based information exchange systems that make use of the Internet for direct application-to-application communication. These systems can be made up of programs, messages, objects, or documents.

A Web Service is a combination of several open standards and protocols that are used for exchanging data between systems or applications. Software applications that are developed in various computer programming languages and are running on various platforms can use web services to directly exchange data over computer networks like the Internet in a manner that is similar to inter-process communication on a single computer. This interoperability across platforms is made possible due to the use of open standards.

Components of Web Services

1. SOAP: Simple Object Access Protocol, web services use this protocol which uses XML as a payload or request body. This is a stateful protocol as there is no independent method for the specific type of operation. All the requests and responses are carried at once through XML and no independent methods like GET, PUT, POST or DELETE are explicitly provided.

2. WSDL: Web Services Description Language is used by SOAP to make a request which is a very useful component of web service. This defines where the Web Service actually resides and also the type of Web Service to be picked up for a specific request. 

3. UDDI: This stands for Universal Description Discovery and Integration. UDDI is responsible for letting a client find out (UDDI provides a repository for WSDL) where the WSDL’s XML file is located. This is a service provider who provides the Web Service. Hence, for a particular service provider, the UDDI is used for describing, discovering and publishing those Web Services.

4. XML-RPC: This stands for Extensible Markup Language - Remote Procedure, this is a very important component of web service, it is responsible for sending messages across systems. Requests and responses are in the form of XML and are sent/received through the HTTP POST. A great feature of XML-RPC is that a client application residing on a different platform can communicate with a different server.

Types of Web Services

1. SOAP Service: This was designed to ensure that programs built on different platforms and programming languages could securely exchange data.

2. REST Service: This was designed specifically for working with components such as media components, files, or even objects on a particular hardware device. REST uses the regular HTTP verbs of GET, POST, PUT and DELETE for working with the required components.

Features of Web Services

There are many features of Web Services and some of them are:

1. XML-Based: Web services make use of XML at its data representation and data transportation layers. By using XML, web services take away any operating system, networking, or platform binding. Applications that are based on Web Services are highly interoperable at their core level.

2. Loosely Coupled: A consumer of a web service is not bound directly to that web service. The web service interface can be modified over time without compromising the client's capacity to interact with the service. A system that is tightly coupled implies that the client and the server-side logic are closely tied to one another, which implies that if one interface changes, the other interface must be updated. taking in a loosely coupled architecture serves to make software systems more manageable and allows simpler integration between separate systems.

3. Coarse-Grained: Various object-oriented technologies such as Java expose their data services through individual methods. An individual method is too fine an operation to be used to provide any useful capability at a corporate level. Developing a Java software from scratch entails the development of several fine-grained methods that are then formed into a coarse-grained service that is consumed by either a client-side project or another service.

Benefits of Web Services

There are many benefits of Web Services and some of them are: 

1. Web Services exposes the existing function on the network.

2. Web Services allows for Interoperability in the application.

3. Web Services makes use of a standardized protocol.

4. There is a Lower Cost of Communication when you are using a web service

Why Study Web Services?

1. Interoperability: Learn how to communicate across different languages, get in-depth into web service protocols and understand how the web is connected.

2. Job Opportunities and Career Advancement

3. Increase Your Earning Potential

4. Increases Productivity and Efficiency

Web Services Course Outline

Web Services - Introduction

Web Services - What are Web Services?

Web Services - Why Web Services?

Web Services - Characteristics

Web Services - Architecture

Web Services - Components

Web Services - Examples

Web Services - Security

Web Services - Standards

Web Services - Summary

Web Services - Video Lectures

Web Services - Exams And Certification