Talk:Web service

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I don't see how the new images (derived from the one at the top) add anything. Furthermore, they really don't make much sense (this isn't XML-RPC, and they don't relate to points in the text). Unless someone disagrees, I'll remove them. mnot 02:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Removed. mnot 14:38, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Puting back a image: yes, two is a lot. Only one is ok for didatic. "RPC is a very popular usage of the web-service architecture, but is ONLY PART of the full architecture, and the image leaves it clearly". -- Krauss 25/sep/06


Isn't it so that information about three styles of use is a bit outdated? Wikipesia's article "Service-oriented architecture" states: Though many definitions of SOA limit themselves to technology or just Web Services, this is predominantly pushed by technology vendors; in 2003 they talked just of Web Services, while in 2006 the talk is of events and process engines.

It seems that SOA has overgrown its infancy and became to be a powerful paradigm: http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2006/04/04/understanding-service-oriented-architecture.html Sciagent 08:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Additional 'external link' for Web Services page.

I'd like to recommend the following resource links be added to the Web Services article under External Links:

Tohagan 00:20, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Simon sprott 14:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Mzaremba (talk) 14:06, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

  • The most comprehensive collection of public Web Services (18K) is available through seekda (XMethods, whose link is in the current article indexes just a fraction of known public Web Services).

[edit] More non-technical detail

Could someone talk about the uses of Web services? Looking for technical examples and business examples. Why would a business look to utilize Web services?

Thanks.

76.187.219.94 15:20, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I concur. How and for what is all this used in real life? (As real as it can get...) Some examples if you please. Wipe (talk) 02:06, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] REST: Stateful or stateless (or both)?

In the Principles section of the REST –article we read: -A protocol that is:

  • Client/Server
  • Stateless
  • Cacheable
  • Layered

From Web_service#Styles of use: -Here, the focus is on interacting with stateful resources, rather than messages or operations.

Can someone explain? --84.48.33.95 09:08, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RPC

There's some confusion in this article about Wire formats versus client APIs. There is a form of SOAP encoding called RPC/enc which predates XML schema (XSD), and was designed to allow you to marshall a graph of of native objects in a SOAP call. It is this that is discredited in WS-I, and somewhat deprecated in the current Java/C# SOAP stacks. Why? Because it was a nighmare of interoperability grief.

There is also Remote Procedure Calls as a paradigm for client side invocation of web services, and that is very much with us. It is certainly intrinsic to Sun's Web Services APIs in Java, originally called [JAX-RPC] (Java XML API for RPC) and now called JAX-WS, Java XML API for web services). This is not deprecated by the main stream vendors, although I have argued very much that it should be :

cite: Loughran S. and Smith E., Rethinking the Java SOAP stack, proceedings IEEE International Conference of Web Services 2005, http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2005/HPL-2005-83.html

I'm not going to edit the entry as I'm clearly biased, but I think that the article needs to explain about rpc/enc versus doc/lit and "wrapped" messages, separately from the actual programming model used client-side to make calls on a remote service. SteveLoughran 16:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Performance

There is a new criticism over XML as being slow for use of XML and SOAP envelope/HTTP transport. Are there any recent citations for this? The sole one that I am aware of is [[1]], which would do as a first citation. SteveLoughran 20:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] scope of the term "Web service"

The introduction cites the W3C and lets it sound like the W3C definition is very broad about the usage of the term Web Service and only public perception and other standards like WS-I are narrowing it to WSDL/SOAP. This is actually not true, the complete cite from the W3C WS Glossary explicitely names WSDL and SOAP. The introduction should be reformulated to avoid this impression. Zefiro 15:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

The definition (W3C What is a Web service) is poor, since it "defines" in one sentence and then clarifies in the others that it should utilize WSDL and SOAP. It also states that a web service does not require HTTP or XML. I'm also not sure how well-defined "Web-related standards" is. It should instead be worded to say what the objective of a Web Service ("a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network") and then define it by how it accomplishes this objective by using WSDL, XML, SOAP, HTTP, etc. 199.94.94.21 12:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

There has been a lot of vandalism editing lately, hasn't it ? Any idea of the reason behind that? This is not a all public article so I just don't understand. Do you think there is a need to act ? Dockurt2k 15:48, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


yes there has. There's no obvious cause; its just minor recreational vandalism rather than some concerted effort. If it can be kept under control, then good. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SteveLoughran (talk • contribs) 20:33, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Poor articel

This article is of a very poor standard.Not really good. Lots of errors on this one —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.66.3.93 (talk • contribs) 13:06, 24 May 2007

then fix it! :-) John Vandenberg 13:26, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Outdated

This article says that in common usage a Web Service is SOAP based. I think that was true a few years ago but more and more the common understanding is that a Web Service is a service accessible from the web (i.e. via HTTP). This seems to me, to be the simplest definition and the most fitting.

As evidence, I offer Amazon Web Services (AWS) which provides both SOAP and non-SOAP versions of their services. If a web service must use SOAP, then it would be improper for Amazon to call these REST interfaces web services. It's pretty plain to me that making SOAP a requirement of Web Services is a pointless distinction.

A lot of organizations are treating SOAP as a legacy protocol. Personally I call SOAP "xml-CORBA".

I also don't understand the characterization of REST as emulating HTTP. AFAIK, REST is defined in terms of HTTP. It's not emulating the four operations of HTTP (get, put, post, delete), it's built on top of them.

Dubwai (talk) 19:52, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I see your point. Perhaps it should be clear this is SOAP web services and not RESTy ones (As amazon S3) or HTTP query abuse (amazon simpledb). Note that you can use the REST operations over other protocols (such as XMPP); you get the same state model over different transports. SteveLoughran (talk) 22:34, 27 January 2008 (UTC)