DarrenBarefoot.com

Avoiding more pressing matters since 2020

Posted on by

What the Heck are Web Services?

I used to work for a company that, in the words of one customer, ‘did web services before they were called web services’. They’re still a client of ours, actually. I should, then, be able to explain what the heck they are.

This question was recently raised on a mailing list associated with the Pirillo empire. Somebody pointed to the Wikipedia entry, which is technically correct but pretty obtuse for the layperson. This was my shot at an explanation:

Web services are sometimes also referred to as software services. Essentially, they’re bits of programmatical functionality available over the Web. Other (web or desktop, but mostly web I think) applications can use this functionality, either at a price or for free.

For example, the first Web service I was ever involved with provided weather information from any airport when you gave it that airport’s three-letter code. By itself, that’s not all that exciting. However, if you combine it with Google Maps (which also offers web services via an API), you can build yourself a desktop map app which will shows you weather information.

In significant ways, web services are the plumbing which underpin the world of Web 2.0.

Does an RSS feed qualify as a web service? I’m not sure. Regardless, lots of web services consume RSS feeds.

Chris’s baby, TagJag, looks to be built entirely out of web services. That is, when you search in TagJag, it sends your query via web services to all these different search engines and related sites

That’s not exactly crystal clear, but hopefully it’s a decent start for the web services noob.

This entry was posted in:Internet, Web 2.0
Unknown's avatar

Published by dbarefoot

Darren Barefoot is an author, speaker and digital strategist. He’s the co-founder of Capulet Communications, and co-author of “Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”.

2 comments

  1. I liked the days when “web services” meant SOAP and WSDL.

    Now the term seems to be used most often to describe what are otherwise known as “websites with APIs” – and those APIs are often REST-based, not SOAP-based.

  2. I have proclaimed a ban on anyone coining a new technical term using “web” to mean anything other than the nice comfy HTTP web page web.

    In theory, to certain technical practitioners anyway, capital W capital S Web Services means a specific set of protocols and standards, including SOAP and WSDL as mentioned above.

    Not even W3C manages to maintain the dual capitalization though, they prefer the even less distinct “Web services”.

    http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/

Comments are closed.