A Web page
A console / Windows application
A Wireless Markup Language (WML) / WMLScript to interact with mobile phones
A Palm / Win CE application to use on Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). I will explain this process in the
You can also call the Web Service directly using the HTTP GET method. In this case we will not be going through the above Web page and clicking the Invoke button. The syntax for directly calling the Web Service using HTTP GET is
http://server/webServiceName.asmx/functionName?parameter=parameterValue
Therefore, the call for our Web Service will be
http://localhost/work/aspx/SampleService.asmx/GetSecurityInfo?Code=IBM
This will produce the same result as clicking the Invoke button.
Now we know how to create a Web Service and use it. But the work is half done. How will our clients find our Web Service? Is there any way to search for our Web Service on the Internet? Is there a Web crawler or a Yahoo search engine for Web Services? In order to answer these questions we need to create a "discovery" file for our Web Service.
Creating a Discovery file
Web Service discovery is the process of locating and interrogating Web Service descriptions, which is a preliminary step for accessing a Web Service. It is through the discovery process that Web Service clients learn that a Web Service exists, what its capabilities are, and how to properly interact with it. Discovery file is a XML document with a .DISCO extension. It is not compulsory to create a discovery file for each Web Service. Here is a sample discovery file for our securities Web Service.
We can name this file "SampleService.disco" and save it to the same directory as the Web Service. If we are creating any other Web Services under the "/work/aspx" directory, it is wise to enable "dynamic discovery." Dynamic discovery will scan for all the *.DISCO files in all the subdirectories of "/work/aspx" automatically.
An example of an active discovery file can be found at http://services3.xmethods.net/dotnet/default.disco. By analyzing the discovery file we can find where the Web Services reside in the system. Unfortunately both these methods require you to know the exact URL of the discovery file. If we cannot find the discovery file, we will not be able to locate the Web Services. Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) describes mechanisms to advertise existing Web Services. This technology is still at the infant stage. UDDI is an open, Internet-based specification designed to be the building block that will enable businesses to quickly, easily, and dynamically find and transact business with one another using their preferred applications. A reference site for UDDI is http://uddi.microsoft.com.
There have been a lot of Web Services written by developers. www.xmethods.com is one of the sites that has an index of Web Services. Some developers are building WSDL search engines to find Web Services on the Web.
Deploying a Web Service
Deploying the Web Services from development to staging or production is very simple. Similar to ASP.NET applications, just copy the .ASMX file and the .DISCO files to the appropriate directories, and you are in business.
The future of the Web Services
The future looks bright for the Web Service technology. Microsoft is not alone in the race for Web Service technology. Sun and IBM are very interested. There are SOAP toolkits available for Apache and Java Web servers. I believe Web Services needs a bit of work, especially the Web Service discovery process. It is still very primitive.
On a positive note, Web Services have the potential to introduce new concepts to the Web. One I refer to as "pay per view" architecture. Similar to pay-TV, we can build Web sites that can generate revenue for each request a user sends (as opposed to a flat, monthly subscription). In order to get some data, we can sometimes pay a small fee. Commercially this could be handy for a lot of people.
Examples
Online newspaper sites can publish a 10-year-old article with a $2 "pay per view" structure.
Stock market portals can itemize every user portfolio for every single stock quote and build pricing and discount structures. And the list goes on ...
On a very optimistic note, Web Services can be described as the "plug and play" building blocks of enterprise Business to Business (B2B) Web solutions.
Appendix A
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