Professional XML Web Services

Web Services are self-describing, modular applications. The Web Services architecture can be thought of as a wrapper for the application code. This wrapper provides standardized means of: describing the Web Service and what it does; publishing it to a registry, so that it can easily be located; and exposing an interface, so that the service can be invoked - all in a machine-readable format. What is particularly compelling about Web Services is that they can be accessed by any client that understands XML, regardless of the platform, language, or object model.

This book provides a snapshot of the current state of these rapidly evolving technologies, beginning by detailing the main protocols that underpin the Web Services model (SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI), and then putting this theory to practical use in a wide array of popular toolkits, platforms, and development environments.

The technologies presented in this book provide the foundations of Web Services computing, which is set to revolutionize Distributed Computing, as we know it.

This book covers: