Web Services

In the computational Neolithic Age soon after the mainframe dinosaurs decided to let the meek desktops inherit the earth, Sun decided that a defining a protocol which allowed computers to call remote methods across machine and language boundaries was a . So, they cooked-up RPC and the XDR data format. RPC gave the formalities as to how the methods should be called while XDR defined the data's wire format, and all was good.

Since then many many protocols have been hatched which imitate, emulate, and evolve the old-school RPC-XDR. The latest branch in this lineage is headed up by what are called ``web services.'' A web service, generically, is a set of methods which can be called across machine and language boundaries using XML and a wire protocol such as HTTP, HTTPS,.... Usually a web service uses either XML-RPC or WSDL, both are protocols using XML for calling remote methods, and relies on some type server software, usually CGI, Servlets, or ..., to call the correct remote methods. So, in taking a peek in at web services lets first peek in on CGI, Servlets, and the kitchen sink.

• CGI, Servlets, and the Kitchen Sink Oh My!
• ...and XML-RPC Oh No!
• SOAP
  • SOAP Messages
  • SOAP RPC Representation
  • Leonardo Da Vinci's Airplane Tickets
  
  
• WSDL