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What is Web services? What can I do with Web services?
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What are Web services' component technologies? How does Web services relate to other technologies? How can I use Web services in an application? How can I improve my Web services skills? What IBM tools and products are available for Web services?
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The developerWorks Web services zone contains literally hundreds of articles, tutorials, and tips to help a developer make the most of Web servicesrelated applications; but for users trying to find their way in a new topic, all of that information can be overwhelming. This page provides an overview for readers who would like to learn about Web services but don't know where to start. It places all of the basics of Web services technology into their proper context and ties together relevant developerWorks articles, tutorials and tips, IBM learning services education, Webcasts, workshops, and IBM products for further investigation.

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What is Web services?

Web services is a technology that allows applications to communicate with each other in a platform- and programming language-independent manner. A Web service is a software interface that describes a collection of operations that can be accessed over the network through standardized XML messaging. It uses protocols based on the XML language to describe an operation to execute or data to exchange with another Web service. A group of Web services interacting together in this manner defines a particular Web service application in a ServiceOriented Architecture (SOA).

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The software industry is finally coming to terms with the fact that integrating software applications across multiple operating systems, programming languages, and hardware platforms is not something that can be solved by any one particular proprietary environment. Traditionally, the problem has been one of tight-coupling, where one application that calls a remote network is tied strongly to it by the function call it makes and the parameters it requests. In most systems before Web services, this is a fixed interface with little flexibility or adaptability to changing environments or needs.

Web services uses XML that can describe any and all data in a truly platform-independent manner for exchange across systems, thus moving towards loosely-coupled applications. Furthermore, Web services can function on a more abstract level that can reevaluate, modify or handle data types dynamically on demand. So, on a technical level, Web services can handle data much easier and allow software to communicate more freely.

On a higher conceptual level, we can look at Web services as units of work, each handling a specific functional task. One step above this, the tasks can be combined into business-oriented tasks to handle particular business operational tasks, and this in turn allows non-technical people to think of applications that can handle business issues together in a workflow of Web services applications. Thus, once the Web services are designed and built by technical people, business process architects can aggregate them into solving business level problems. To borrow a car engine analogy, a business process architect can think of putting together a whole car engine with the car frame, body, transmission, and other systems, rather than look at the many pieces within each engine. Furthermore, the dynamic platform means that the engine can work together with the transmission or parts from other car manufacturers.

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What rises from this last aspect is that Web services are helping to bridge the gap between business people and technologists in an organization. Web services make it easier for business people to understand technical operations. Business people can describe events and activities and technologists can associate them with appropriate services.

With universally defined interfaces and well designed tasks, it also becomes easier to reuse these tasks and thus, the applications they represent. Reusability of application software means a better return on investment on software because it can produce more from the same resources. It allows business people to consider using an existing application in a new way or offering it to a partner in a new way, thus potentially increasing the business transactions between partners.

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Therefore, the primary issues that Web services tries to tackle are the issues of data and application integration, and that of transforming technical functions into business-oriented computing tasks. These two facets allow businesses to communicate on a process or application level with their partners, while leaving dynamic room to adapt to new situations or work with different partners on demand.

Learn more about it:

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To learn about Web services, you should first know how XML, the Extensible Markup Language, works. XML and how it will change the Web and Introduction to XML are two good articles to start with. While Web services technology itself is language-independent there are many more tools and software implementations available in Java technology. A good introduction to the concepts and technical structure of Web services is available in the Introduction to Web services and the WSDK V5.1 tutorial. If you are a software architect or a business person looking to understand Web services, An Executive's Guide to Web services has many useful ideas on the business value of Web services.

Related links: IBM PartnerWorld alphaWorks (alpha technologies) Academic program IBM developers store IBM Redbooks

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What can I do with Web services?

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developerWorks : Web services : New to Web services

While Web services allows all these dynamic features to combine multiple services into applications, you still have to build the services first. Programming languages in Computer science is continually evolving. We began decades ago with the idea of a function whereby you provide it some parameters, it executes some operation on those parameters, and it returns a value based on its calculations. Eventually, this first concept evolved into the object where each object had not just a number of functions it can perform but also its own private data variables, rather than relying on external system-wide data variables that previously made it more complex to develop applications. As applications began communicating with each other, the concept of defined universal interfaces for objects became important, allowing objects on other platforms to communicate even if they were written in other programming languages and ran on other operating systems.

At the most recent step, Web services has moved towards the concept of XML-defined interfaces and communications, finally uniting any kind of application with another, as well as providing the freedom to change and evolve over time, as long as they are designed to the appropriate interface. The versatility of XML is what makes Web services different from previous generation component technologies. It allows the separation of grammatical structure (syntax) and the grammatical meaning (semantics), and how that is processed and understood by each service and the environment it exists in. So now, objects can be defined as services, communicating with other services in XML-defined grammar, whereby each service then translates and analyzes the message according to its local implementation and environment. Thus a networked application can truly be composed of multiple entities of various makes and designs as long as they conform to the rules defined by their service oriented architecture.

Thus, with this in mind, Web services allow you to:

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Interact between services on any platform, written in any language. Conceptualize application functions into task, leading to task-oriented development and workflows. This allows a higher abstraction of software that can be employed by less software-technical users that work on business level analytics. Allow for loose-coupling, which means that interactions between service applications may not break each time there is a change in how one or more services are designed or implemented. Adapt existing applications to changing business conditions and customer needs. Provide existing or legacy software applications with service interfaces without changing the original applications, allowing them to fully operate in the service environment. Introduce other administrative or operations management functions such as reliability, accountability, security, etc., independent of the original function, thus increasing its versatility and usefulness in the business computing environment.

Learn more about it:

Using Web Services Today (and Tomorrow) is a presentation on the various technologies involved in Web services as well as case studies of how they are being used by companies today. Business Processes in a Web services World explains how workflow and business processes can be represented with Web services. Security in a Web services world explores how the security model in Web services is evolving. Merging grids and Web services discusses how Grid computing can use Web services in a cohesive distributed service oriented architecture. An e-mail user interface to Web services describes how mobile devices can interact with enterprise Web services using simple communications protocols such as email. Learn how Web services work in the J2EE model in Integrate enterprise applications with Web services and J2EE and read about the different communications mechanisms in Choosing among JCA, JMS, and Web services for EAI.

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What are Web services' component technologies?

Web services involves a family of related protocols to describe, deliver, and interact with services. This family can be further subdivided into groupings based on common functions and uses. The first group handles the issues of messaging, interface description, addressing and delivery. The most well-known is the messaging protocol known as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). This protocol encodes messages so they can be delivered over the network using a transport protocol such as HTTP, IIOP, SMTP, or others.

The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is represented as a series of XML statements that constitute the definition for the interfaces of each service. Another specification currently in progress is WS-Addressing that defines how to uniquely address and identify Web services in a distributed architecture. Another popular specification is the Web Services Invocation Framework, where you can define WSDL interfaces for any type of component even those that do not use the same messaging protocols.

The next group of protocols and specifications define how services advertise themselves and can find each other on the network. For services to locate each other, the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) protocol defines a registry and associated protocols for locating and accessing services. The Web Services Inspection Language is an alternative mechanism to UDDI that works without the use of a registry.

The Security protocols for Web services begin with the WS-Security specification that defines a token based architecture for secure communications. Built on this base, there are six major component specifications:

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WS-Policy and its related specifications that define the policy rules on how services interact. WS-Trust that defines the trust model for secure exchange. WS-Privacy that defines how privacy of information is maintained. WS-Secure Conversation that defines how to establish a secured session between services for exchanging data using the rules defined in WS-Policy, WS-Trust, and WSPrivacy. WS-Federation that defines the rules of distributed identity and how its managed. WS-Authorization that handles the processing for authorization to access and exchange data.

Beyond the Security model are the application specific specifications including the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) defines workflow operations, and WS-Transaction and WS-Coordination that work together to handle distributed transactional processing.

Currently in the works is a specification for Web Services Distributed Management for software administrative management of all services and the service-oriented architecture. Finally there are specifications for user interfaces (WS-InteractiveApplications) and remote access of Web services (WS-RemotePortals).

The specifications and protocols for Web services are still being defined at the time of writing and only begin to explain how services should interact with each other. However, they cannot cover every single scenario and combination possible. Thus, the Web Services Interoperability Group (WS-I) consisting of members from practically all major and minor vendors involved in Web services development, has taken on the task of developing case studies, sample applications, implementation scenarios, and test tools to ensure that these standards and specifications will truly work with each other irrespective of vendor product implementations.

WS-I has defined their first Basic Profile 1.0 for Web services as well as released their Scenarios, Sample Applications and Test Tools to evaluate and compare results of various implementations according to the Scenarios.

In addition to the WS-I a significant amount of the standards work is being developed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Learn more about it:

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The Web Services Conceptual Architecture explains the technical ideas behind Web services and how it functions. The significant Web services specifications and protocol standards are available in our Web services Standards database. More information about specifications and standards are available at the W3C site, and the OASIS site. You can read about the work of the WS-I in First look at the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0, First look at the WS-I Usage Scenarios, and Understanding the WS-I Test Tools.

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How does Web services relate to other technologies?

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Web services is primarily an integration technology. However, it is independent of form in itself. The component technologies for Web services are commonly defined and interact in XML, as mentioned earlier. However, since XML itself is language independent, so is Web services. Thus Web services can be developed in a number of programming languages including Java, Python, Perl, C#, Basic, and others.

The origins of Web services lie in trying to find a better way for the architecture of Internet and Web applications to better communicate and interact with each other. Thus, most Web services today are based on programs that run on application server environments like WebSphere, Apache, and others. They are not required to but some of the best Web services tools are designed for such environments.

By providing simpler, universal interfaces, Web services is also helping to improve how the pervasive computing model works for mobile and portable environments. Software for mobile computing is quickly adopting the Web services model of communicating while also helping to improve the interface issues of visual Web services.

Grid computing has adopted Web services as part of the Open Grid Services Architecture, a new model for this type of distributed computing that uses Web services to communicate how the grid operates.

Even Autonomic computing which is an interesting new way to how computers can maintain and manage themselves has some applications for Web services.

Learn more about it:

Java is a keystone for Web services and in fact most of the articles in the developerWorks Web services zone focus on Java-based development. For example, the Developer's introduction to JAX-RPC, Part 1 and Developer's introduction to JAX-RPC, Part 2 talk specifically about the J2EE APIs involved in Web services development. Developing a .Net client to interact with a WebSphere Web service and A Demonstration of Web Services Interoperability Between the WebSphere and .Net gives an example of how Web services can work cross-platform with different Web architectures. A visual tour of OGSA explains how Grid computing is now being designed around Web services. Cross-platform programming with the WSTK for Mobile Devices takes a look at the tools for programming Web services for mobile computing. The ETTK self-healing and optimizing demo shows autonomic computing and Web services working together.

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How can I use Web services in an application?

There are several ways to think about Web services when building applications. At the most basic level it is an advanced communications protocol family allowing applications to talk to each other. This level has progressed quite significantly over the past few years with many tools that allow software developers to write interacting Web services and build complex applications. This level is often characterized by direct one-on-one interactions between services or relatively few services interacting with each other.

However, just using Web services as a communications protocol belies its true power, that of the service-oriented architecture (SOA). The SOA describes an entire system of services dynamically looking around for each other, getting together to perform some application, and recombining in many ways. This model encourages the reuse of technology and software that evolves the way applications are designed, developed and put to use. It brings the world of distributed computing to a closer reality. At this level software developers need to think of the SOA model and design their distributed application across the model. This level is characterized by the use of technologies to allow distributed communications of services such as the use of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), which is a common distribution network for services to work with.

Finally, the highest level is to look at this SOA model and the many component services as building blocks, that can be assembled in whole sections into full applications instead of the traditional method of writing line after line of code. By examining the connecting interfaces, we can build whole applications without ever really writing code. For that matter direct code may even get in the way since the services may be written in numerous different languages and platforms. The blocks can be put together into a workflow of operations that define how the application performs, and other tools can be used to monitor the effectives of the workflow at each service or group of services. At this level, developers can put away the use of regular programming languages and work in a Model-Driven Architecture that helps them to build applications more accurately to a design. This design then runs on top of a distributed system like an ESB.

Learn more about it:

The Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) [[link to Java newto]]is a leading model for developing Web services in the Java programming language. You should read about J2EE and learn how it works to understand the first level of developing for Web services. The campaign is directed at new Web services developers providing a full complement of information, tools and support to help you get started in Web services development. Building a Web service from SOAP to nuts and Create, deploy, publish, and consume a simple Web service are two introductory articles on building interacting Web services. After you have read the Introduction to Web services and the WSDK V5.1 tutorial you should look to Creating a Web service from a Java class with the WSDK V5.1 and Create a Web service from a Stateless Session Bean with WSDK V5.1. Access DB2 with Web services and Invoking Web services from SQL gives insight into building database Web services. Business processes and workflow in the Web services world describes how business processes work in a service-oriented architecture. To learn more about workflow and business process with Web services you should read about the BPEL4WS specification in the BPEL4WS column written by some of the specification authors. From UML to BPEL: Model Driven Architecture in a Web services world explains how Web services can fit into the world of Model-Driven Architectures.

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I understand Web services, but how can I continue to improve my skills?

The best way to keep up with Web services is to read the latest technical articles and work with the various tools that are available for it. Since the technology itself is evolving, this information and these tools provide the latest interpretations of the best ways to work with Web services. Additionally, toolkits like the Emerging Technology Toolkit, leap a few steps ahead into the cutting edge of these technologies to allow you to experiment on the same technologies that the experts are working on. These tools are described in the next section.

Currently, Web services has been progressing significantly and the diversity of information on this topic is exploding. There is a significant amount of technical content on the first level of developing Web services for direct interaction that can be found on the Web services zone. Even protocols like SOAP which have been around for over three years are still being improved on. Since this topic is a moving target, it is useful to come back to Web services zone on a regular basis. If you have not yet participated in the SpeedStart Web services campaign, you should do so.

Another good way of improving your skills is to participate in the discussion forums directly listed on the zone. Here you can find the practitioners who are actively working in this area, and even help directly from the research and development staff that are designing the technologies and building the products.

For the advanced developers, you can participate in the development and evolution of the Web services specifications themselves by participating the various workshops that occur monthly.

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The Web services zones regularly adds new tutorials that explain how to perform useful tasks in Web services in detail. If you have developed Web services already and are interested in sharing the interfaces with others, the Speed-start Web services campaign shows you how to publish your services to our registry. The Speed-start Web services discussion forum is a good place for novice and intermediate questions on developing Web services. In addition, you can also participate in the implementation-specific news and discussion groups on the IBM WebSphere SDK for Web services, and the IBM alphaWorks Emerging Technologies Toolkit. The Web Services Specification Workshops are multi-vendor events to allow you to learn more and offer feedback on Web services specifications. The Best Practices for Web services column on developerWorks examines the real world situations that team members from the IBM JStart program for early technology implementation are encountering along their path to successful project implementation. Learning these best practices can help you assess and adapt to your own project situation. The Web services demo collection from developerWorks implements live working Web services as well as demos available online that display different capabilities and implementation cases in Web services. These demos also come with the code to implement front-end or back-end applications and create working versions of these demos yourself. Since this is a control situation with established working examples, rebuilding your own demos or modifying the code based on this can help you exercise your Web services development skills.

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What IBM tools and products are available for Web services?
IBM provides a comprehensive set of tools for developing Web services at whatever abstraction level you are working at, from basic interacting Web services to building Model-Driven Architectures. The tools that comprise this portfolio include the WebSphere Studio product family, the Rational product family, and those from DB2, Tivoli and Lotus. The SpeedStart Web Services Campaign shows which tools apply to Web services.

IBM also provides several packages that implement the Web services protocols and can assist you in your development activities, through both standard products and through testbed implementations such as those offered through our alphaWorks program.

Learn more about it:

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The SpeedStart Web Services campaign has a focus on the IBM portfolio of tools for building Web services. The IBM WebSphere SDK for Web Services (WSDK) is a stable computing environment that implements the necessary Web services protocols as defined in the Web Services Interoperability Group's WS-I Basic Profile 1.0. It is an integrated kit for creating, discovering, invoking, and testing Web services. The Emerging Technologies Toolkit offers advanced tools for Web services development in Grid computing, asynchronous Web services, business processes, autonomic computing and other services. The BPWS4J toolkit implements an engine for developing and testing BPEL4WS documents and workflows. The Web Services Invocation Framework package provides a standard API for invoking services described in WSDL, independently of the messaging protocol such as SOAP. The Web Services for Life Sciences package is a collection of services for life sciences software development. The alphaWorks Web services site has even more projects and tools for implementing Web services.

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