Understanding Webservices

Webservices allow you to expose selected business system processes via a platform independent API web interface. Using XML and/or SOAP to accept data, process it, then return a response. The response may be a simple success/failure or it may be a complex data object.

Web services are the future of systems integration. You can allow your clients, partners, vendors, distributors etc. exchange information and process data directly from one system to another without any human interface required.

Webservices can eliminate import/export upload/download processes and many other time-consuming tasks allowing for ebusiness interaction to flow automatically.

Webservices Technical Overview

Webservices interface through a public URL and act essentially like a web form. In fact, you can build a web form to pass the information into a webservice and display the results. The web form could reside on any web site and take the required parameters as input data in the form, then the form action would turn the form input into a XML packet and post it to the webservices URL. Interacting with a webservice is commonly known as "consuming a webservice". While webservices can easily be used in this fashion in the form of a "human interface", the real power of the webservice is the ability for it to integrate with other business systems over the web.