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
1
interoperable 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

Interoperability among 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

Web Services 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