Using Web Services to exchange information via XML
Edward Foster · 2006
Web Services have evolved over the past 4 years and are a key component of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Web Services are units of code that can be called via HTTP requests in the same way that traditional websites can. The fundamental difference between them is that web services do not normally send HTML in response to a request but instead emit XML. The use of HTTP and XML gives web services advantages of platform and technology independence and allow web services to be set up to work across any intranet or even the internet. .NET is a powerful framework created by Microsoft that contains a host of classes that can be used to create powerful web and Windows applications as well as web services. This paper will outline the core elements of web services, their use and also how .NET can be used to create a web service.