What is Web Service and What are different types of webservices?

What is Web Service and What are different types of web services?

A Web Service is can be defined by following ways:

• Is a client server application or application component for communication.
• Method of communication between two devices over network.
• Is a software system for interoperable machine to machine communication.
• Is a collection of standards or protocols for exchanging information between two devices or application.

Let's understand it by the figure given below:

As you can see in the figure, java, .net or PHP applications can communicate with other applications through web service over the network. For example, java application can interact with Java, .Net and PHP applications. So web service is a language independent way of communication.

Types of Web Services

There are mainly two types of web services.

1. SOAP web services.
2. RESTful web services.

SOAP Web Services

SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. It is a XML-based protocol for accessing web services. SOAP is a W3C recommendation for communication between two applications.

SOAP is XML based protocol. It is platform independent and language independent. By using SOAP, you will be able to interact with other programming language applications.

Advantages of Soap Web Services

WS Security: SOAP defines its own security known as WS Security.

Language and Platform independent: SOAP web services can be written in any programming language and executed in any platform.

Disadvantages of Soap Web Services

Slow: SOAP uses XML format that must be parsed to be read. It defines many standards that must be followed while developing the SOAP applications. So it is slow and consumes more bandwidth and resource.

WSDL dependent: SOAP uses WSDL and doesn't have any other mechanism to discover the service.

RESTful Web Services

REST stands for Representational State Transfer. REST is an architectural style not a protocol.

Advantages of RESTful Web Services

Fast: RESTful Web Services are fast because there is no strict specification like SOAP. It consumes less bandwidth and resource.

Language and Platform independent: RESTful web services can be written in any programming language and executed in any platform.

Can use SOAP: RESTful web services can use SOAP web services as the implementation.

Permits different data format: RESTful web service permits different data format such as Plain Text, HTML, XML and JSON.

SOAP vs REST Web Services

S.No	SOAP	REST
1	SOAP is a protocol.	REST is an architectural style.
2	SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol.	REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer.
3	SOAP can't use REST because it is a protocol.	REST can use SOAP web services because it is a concept and can use any protocol like HTTP, SOAP.
4	SOAP uses services interfaces to expose the business logic.	REST uses URI to expose business logic.
5	SOAP defines standards to be strictly followed.	REST does not define too much standards like SOAP.
6	SOAP defines standards to be strictly followed.	REST does not define too much standards like SOAP.
7	SOAP requires more bandwidth and resource than REST.	REST requires less bandwidth and resource than SOAP.
8	SOAP defines its own security.	RESTful web services inherits security measures from the underlying transport.
9	SOAP permits XML data format only.	REST permits different data format such as Plain text, HTML, XML, JSON etc.
10	SOAP is less preferred than REST.	REST more preferred than SOAP.

Thanks for reading.....

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