Introduction to Web Services

This lecture sets the scene for the rest of the Web Services Theme. It covers the motivation behind Web Services and its relative position within the Distributed Computing market. In the second part of the lecture, we attempt to revisit some basic technologies that are required for Web Services like XML, WSDL and SOAP. The lectures will go so deep into these technologies as it is required for understanding web services and the material that is included in the lectures to follow.

Breakdown

1. Web Services
   Basic definition of the technology and some motivation for it. Benefits of Web Services compared to other distributed system’s technologies.

2. Distributed Systems
   Existing distributed system’s technologies like CORBA, COM and RMI.

3. Service Based Architectures
   The basic architectures that one can have with web services and how they are used to solve a scientific problem.

4. XML Primer
   Introduction to XML. Elements, Attributes, Processing Instructions defined and composed into a small example useful for web services.

5. XML Namespaces
   The problem that arises by the flexibility of defining your own tags in XML and how it is solved using Namespaces

6. XML Schema
   Giving predefined structure to XML documents using the XML Schema

7. WSDL
   The WSDL as a specific XML Schema for describing Web Services

8. SOAP
   The protocol that makes Web Services actually work.