What is Web Service and SOAP

 Web services are a simple interface using HTTP protocol.

Web services can be:

1.)developed by one company,

2.)used by another company, and

3.)hosted by a third company

 What’s in the name Web Services?

 Web means HTTP protocol

 Services means request – response

 Web services is a stateless protocol(we send a request,we receive a response,we are finished.)

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a way for a program running in one kind of operating system (such as Windows 2000) to communicate with a program in the same or another kind of an operating system (such as Linux) by using the World Wide Web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)and its Extensible Markup Language (XML) as the mechanisms for information exchange. Since Web protocols are available for use by all major operating system platforms, HTTP and XML provide an already at-hand solution to the problem of how programs running under different operating systems in a network can communicate with each other.

An advantage of SOAP is that program calls are much more likely to get through firewall servers that screen out requests other than those for known applications (through the designated port mechanism). Since HTTP requests are usually allowed through firewalls, programs using SOAP to communicate can be sure that they can communicate with programs anywhere.