RE: potential users of web services

+1

I was struggling with that word. I was originally going to call it simply
software -- trying not to  imply any level of granularity, but then I
thought -- well, it might actually be implemented using firmware or
hardware. So I went with the word component. Perhaps it might be best to
call it a unit of work (although I don't want to imply that it supports
transaction semantics).

Anne

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-ws-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of
> Hao He
> Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 7:35 PM
> To: 'Anne Thomas Manes'; thomi@di.uoa.gr; www-ws@w3.org
> Subject: RE: potential users of web services
>
>
> I agree most with Anne except one tiny bit:
>
> I would say that a web service is a service provided by one or more
> components that exposes
> a programmatic interface.  A compoent itself is not the service.
> Service is
> the functionality that defined in the interface.
>
>
> Hao
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anne Thomas Manes [mailto:anne@manes.net]
> Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 5:05 AM
> To: thomi@di.uoa.gr; www-ws@w3.org
> Subject: RE: potential users of web services
>
>
> Thomi,
>
> Ask five people the definition of "web service" and you'll get
> six answers.
>
> I generally describe a web service as a service that communicates over the
> web. A service is a component that exposes a programmatic interface. The
> service interface must be described; and the service
> implementation must be
> discoverable.
>
> When you relate this abstract definition to current technologies, you can
> implement a web service by creating a service that exposes a SOAP
> interface,
> which is described by WSDL, and which is registered in UDDI. But
> I wouldn't
> want to use current technologies to *define* the basic concept. I
> also don't
> think that it's essential to use any of these technologies to create a web
> service. I can certainly create a web service using XML-RPC or
> RosettaNet or
> a host of other technologies.
>
> That said, I would concur that web services are intended to be consumed by
> applications rather than humans. But keep in mind that a user interface is
> an application. If I wanted to arrange food for 500 people for
> two weeks in
> Dubai, I would use a catering application, which in turn uses web services
> to find caterers that can provide services in Dubai. The UI isn't the web
> service. The UI uses web services to accomplish its work. Hence
> an ASP page
> or HTML form aren't web services, they are an interface to web services.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Anne Thomas Manes
> CTO, Systinet
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: www-ws-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-request@w3.org]On
> > Behalf Of Thomi Pilioura
> > Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 9:09 AM
> > To: www-ws@w3.org
> > Subject: potential users of web services
> >
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm little confused about the notion of the term "web services".
> > When I'm reading papers related to UDDI,WSDL,SOAP they present
> > web services
> > as a new age of distributed computing and as such they are only
> useful to
> > developers (who are trying to build web applicattions) and not to the
> > end-users. But when I'm reading papers related to DAML-S the idea I'm
> > getting for web services is different. They are also useful to
> > end users as
> > it shown by DAML-S motivating scenarios:
> >
> > Web service discovery
> > Find me a shipping service that transports goods to Dubai.
> >
> > Web service invocation
> > Buy me 500 lbs. powdered milk from www.acmemoo.com
> >
> > Web service selection, composition and interoperation
> > Arrange food for 500 people for 2 weeks in Dubai.
> >
> > Web service execution monitoring
> > Has the powdered milk been ordered and paid for yet?
> >
> > There are also numerous papers that use the term service (and not "web
> > service") and are talking about UDDI, WSDL and DAML-S. What's the
> > difference
> > between "web service" and "service" if both of them work over
> > Internet? For
> > example, a search engine (such as google) is a service, but when it is
> > described in WSDL, published in UDDI and can be invoked using
> > SOAP becomes a
> > web service? Ia a asp or an HTML form a service or a web service?
> >
> > In summary which are the potential users of web services (web service
> > providers, developers, end-users)?
> >
> > could you please shed some light on this?
> > regards
> > Thomi Pilioura
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

Received on Thursday, 4 April 2002 20:47:49 UTC