Putting XML Web Services to Work
The ability to quickly develop and manage XML Web services promises to be one of the most important drivers in determining the success of IT and business operations in the decade ahead. Here are some of the ways that you can use XML Web services.
Enterprise Application Integration
IT departments now shoulder an increasingly important role for building and sustaining a business. To maintain a competitive edge, companies must ensure that their information technology infrastructure drives business success at the lowest cost possible—and with manageable risks.By enabling you to take advantage of your existing IT investments, .NET supports interoperation with leading applications, and does so through widely accepted standards. Not only does .NET provide the fast way to build and deploy XML Web services, but your company can use .NET technologies to initially develop services that can be re-used for other projects or customers. This enables you to manage familiar solutions instead of implementing expensive new projects that require extensive custom coding.
Using .NET, corporate IT departments can share in the ability to create new and innovative revenue streams. By exposing key business processes in a Web-accessible, .NET-integrated form, an enterprise can create a number of new opportunities to market existing products and knowledge.
You can use XML Web services to connect applications within an enterprise with speed, flexibility, and robustness. Through XML Web services and applications such as Microsoft BizTalk® Server, enterprise data in applications can be unlocked and made available to the people who need it by new applications and existing analysis tools (such as Microsoft Excel.)
Figure 2. Connecting applications with XML Web services.
Business-to-Business Services
XML Web services represent the evolution of the Web site. By taking the modular aspects of modern software applications and enabling them to communicate through standard Internet protocols (such as SOAP and UDDI), XML Web services offer a direct means by which business processes can lower costs and interact with fewer intermediaries. Applications that are hosted internally, hosted on remote systems, or even those that belong to partner businesses can be interwoven, empowering businesses to create specialized solutions that meet unique, urgent, or lucrative business needs and opportunities—quickly and economically.Instead of the time and expense associated with creating custom, one-off solutions to link disparate systems, you can use XML Web services to connect applications within an enterprise or between separate organizations. For example, a company could create an XML Web service to interface with an existing accounts receivable application that enables it to transfer data via HTTP to an XML Web service tied to a business partner ’s accounts payable application—eliminating numerous processes, saving time and money. Each XML Web service can be easily modified to quickly enable other business partners to integrate with each system as well as freeing data for other uses internally.
Figure 3. Using XML Web services for business-to-business applications.
Business-to-Consumer Services
Businesses that expose key operational processes as XML Web services and Web applications can expand the ways in which they interact with their customers, while creating more personal and intelligent user experiences. Increased availability and centralized access to multiple products and services also enhance the customer experience.Moving beyond presenting static Web pages to a browser, XML Web services simplify the creation of intuitive, personal experiences combining functionality and data from a number of sources into one smart client application. This makes possible application scenarios with extensive integration of services. For example, a user can quickly plan going to a restaurant and a movie theater by using a calendar application that programmatically accesses a series of XML Web services for reservations and show times. Some of these services may consume other XML Web services, such as a movie schedule service that integrates with a map service to provide directions to a particular theater.
Figure 4. Using XML Web services for business-to-consumer applications.
Mobile Support Services
Using Microsoft ASP.NET and the Mobile Web Controls that are part of the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit, you can quickly create Web applications that consume XML Web services and intelligently adapt the presentation to be optimized for mobile devices such as cell phones, pagers, and PDAs. Smart client applications that directly consume XML Web services can easily be created for devices like the Pocket PC using the .NET Compact Framework, the subset of the .NET Framework optimized for mobile devices.
Figure 5. Creating Web services for mobile communications.
Distributed and Peer-to-Peer Services
XML Web services let you craft applications that directly connect two or more client peers, cutting out the middleman. Through the use of XML Web services, two client applications can both expose and consume information, largely eliminating the need for a central server and cutting down on network and processing bottlenecks. Whether contacting a known peer or initially discovering one through a rendezvous service and then switching to interact directly, peer-to-peer applications expand the possible device and application interactions while largely eliminating server dependencies. In this way a new generation of highly collaborative solutions can take form. For example, two users who each wish to play a game against an opponent can locate each other through a rendezvous service, then directly connect to battle it out.
Figure 6. Using XML Web services for peer-to-peer applications.
