Exercise 16

1. Choose ONE of the four ways to manage and develop integrated systems as listed below;
XML and Web Services as the glue

2. Summarise your understanding and describe its relevance (250 words max) in either your study at university or in your work environment;

XML web services are developed to integrate various systems or to create new applications from existing ones. New powerful applications can be created quite quickly and in a cost effective way when existing applications are exposed as web services.

A web service is one that exposes useful functionality of an application to web users. In most cases, SOAP is used as the protocol. The service provides its description via Web Services Description Language (WSDL) document and is usually registered with Universal Discovery Description Integration (UDDI) so that other users can easily find it.

One of the benefits of web services architecture is that it communicate with different applications written in different languages in a standards-based way. This is extremely helpful when new applications are being created by integrating existing ones since data can be retrieved from all the applications even when they might be written in different languages, hosted in different operating systems using different databases.
Another benefit of using a web service is that they can be used over the standard set of protocols – XML, HTTP, TCP/IP. Therefore, the cost of entry for web services is much lower compare to other technologies.
At work, we created a RSS feed service that was listing the latest updates from three different products (cases, legislation and unreported judgments). We developed this using web services that was calling the various products to get the updates and then created the xml file for the rss.

References:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms996507.aspx

3. Edit TWO similar versions (include bibliography) of that summary to CSU Interact:
a. Post version A as a wiki contribution;

b. Add version B as a final entry to close your developer’s blog.
Web services has changed the way applications are created these days and pushing companies more towards web based applications and less on desktop based applications. Web applications can be accessed from anywhere and does not need to be installed making it a better option compared to desktop applications.

Web applications development is also changing and more applications are getting created using web services. Web services, being standards-based, can be used in creating in any applications, making it more reusable. Web services can also be written in various languages and can communicate with other applications in a standards-based way making it much more powerful and portable.

In short, web services is the soul of internet-based services.

References:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms996507.aspx