What the Heck are Web Services?
I used to work for a company that, in the words of one customer, ‘did web services before they were called web services’. They’re still a client of ours, actually. I should, then, be able to explain what the heck they are.
This question was recently raised on a mailing list associated with the Pirillo empire. Somebody pointed to the Wikipedia entry, which is technically correct but pretty obtuse for the layperson. This was my shot at an explanation:
Web services are sometimes also referred to as software services. Essentially, they’re bits of programmatical functionality available over the Web. Other (web or desktop, but mostly web I think) applications can use this functionality, either at a price or for free.
For example, the first Web service I was ever involved with provided weather information from any airport when you gave it that airport’s three-letter code. By itself, that’s not all that exciting. However, if you combine it with Google Maps (which also offers web services via an API), you can build yourself a desktop map app which will shows you weather information.
In significant ways, web services are the plumbing which underpin the world of Web 2.0.
Does an RSS feed qualify as a web service? I’m not sure. Regardless, lots of web services consume RSS feeds.
Chris’s baby, TagJag, looks to be built entirely out of web services. That is, when you search in TagJag, it sends your query via web services to all these different search engines and related sites
That’s not exactly crystal clear, but hopefully it’s a decent start for the web services noob.
