There is often a need to integrate applications that use different
technologies or that run on different platforms. Many organizations
are adopting XML technologies and web services to allow diverse application
systems to communicate in real-time or near real-time. Web Services
use of a set of vendor neutral technologies and concepts that were designed
to support real-time integration over an internal network or over the
Internet:
- XML - Extensible Markup Language
- XSD - XML Schema Definition
- XSLT - Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation
- SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol
- WSDL - Web Services Description Language
- UDDI - Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration
For example, a J2EE application system running on a Unix platform in the
London branch of a company could "talk" with a .NET application running on a
Windows platform in the New York branch of the same company.
Similarly, a company in Boston could electronically integrate with its
suppliers and/or consumers by each implementing a set of compatible web
services that would interact using these vendor-neutral technologies.
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) leverages these technologies and a
set of architectural principals to help ensure that web services built are
in fact vendor neutral and reusable.
