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Originally published at Internet.comLast week, in a grammatically deficient manner, I spent an entire newsletter hyping this week's topic: Web Services. My goal was to help you see that Web Services are going to be a reality. In the near future you will undoubtedly be using Web Services and might even be creating them yourself!
Web Services Defined
There is nothing complex about the concept of a Web Service. Simply put, a Web Service is a piece of code (be it an applet, component, script, or program) that performs a function and possibly returns a result. What makes a Web Service unique is that it can be called across the Web.
That's it. Nothing more.
Okay, maybe there is a little more to it. First, as a concept, this is nothing new. Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs), COM, Corba, EJBs, servlets, and other standards already have this type of functionality. What makes Web Services unique is the standardization of how it's done, using non-proprietary methods.
Standards bodies are hard at work defining a standard protocol for accessing Web Services and a set of rules for returning information from a Service. The protocol is text-based and is open to everyone. Additionally, the channels for communicating to and from a Web Service are based on existing Web channels such as HTTP...
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