Web Service and

Application Servers

Author: Vivek Sinha

Date: January 2006
Web Service
 According to W3C, web service is a
software system designed to support
interoperable1 machine-to-machine
interaction over a network (generally the
World Wide Web)
 Web Service typically uses Hyper Text
Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

1
Interoperability is the capability of different programs to
exchange data.
Web Service - Evolution
 Over the time, software applications grew from
large mainframe applications (e.g., Cardpac,
VisionPlus) to client-server (e.g., SQL Server) to
applications which can be used over the Web (
http://spreadsheets.google.com).
 These Web applications break down the larger
software system into smaller modular
components, or shared services.
 These applications are packaged and
transported using standard Web protocols, such
as XML and HTTP, thus making them easily
accessible by any user on the Web.
Web Service - Benefits
 Interoperabilityamong applications that span
diverse hardware and software platforms
 Easy and widespread access over the Web.
 Cross Platform and Cross Language
implementation using an XML based description
language.
 Web Services communicate with clients (both
end-user applications or other Web Services)
through XML messages that are transmitted by
standard Internet protocols, such as HTTP.
Tightly Coupled and Loosely Coupled
Applications
A tightly coupled application integrates all
enterprise applications around a single
RDBMS
 A loosely coupled applications integrates
with each other using explicit
requirements, e.g, XML, SOAP etc.
 Web services use loose coupling
Web Service Standards
 Protocol Stack is a collection of computer
networking protocols. It consists of the following
 Service Transport – This includes protocols like HTTP,
SMTP, FTP etc.
 XML Messaging – This is used for encoding messages
in a common XML format
 Service Description – Used to describe public interface
for the service used
 Service Discovery – A service to list business on
Internet
 eXtensible
Markup Language (XML) is general
purpose markup language
Web Service Standards …contd.
 Web Service Security (WS-Security) is
protocol used for applying security
Web Service - Deployment
 WebServices can be deployed using an
Application Server.
 BEA WebLogic
 IBM Lotus Domino

 IBM WebSphere

 JBoss (with Tomcat)

 Microsoft .NET servers

 Oracle Application Server

 Sun One (iPlanet)

Web Service - Deployment …contd.
 Application Server is a software application
which is used to run Web Portals
 Web Server is used to display web pages using
HTTP protocol
 A web server is generally a part of the
application server
 An application server contains the business logic
which can be used by a Graphical User Interface
(GUI) application, web server or other
application servers
 Thanks!

Author: Vivek Sinha

Date: January 2006