Web service: Difference between revisions
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'''Web services''' is a broad term encompassing a variety of ways of obtaining information over the [[internet]]. Since Microsoft's [[.NET platform]] became available in 2002, the term has been used predominantly to refer to two distinct methods by which computer programs can request information from remote computers. These methods are [[Web services with SOAP]] and [[Web services with REST]]. | '''Web services''' is a broad term encompassing a variety of ways of obtaining information over the [[internet]]. Since Microsoft's [[.NET platform]] became available in 2002, the term has been used predominantly to refer to two distinct methods by which computer programs can request information from remote computers. These methods are [[Web services with SOAP]] and [[Web services with REST]]. | ||
==History== | |||
As soon as there were programming languages, computer programmers have desired to reuse certain programs to avoid "reinventing the wheel". One of the ways people envisioned reusing software was to provide libraries of code which could be called by other programmers. Ever since the advent of the internet, programmers sought ways to call the code in libraries from remote host computers. But such remote calling was difficult because there were many different types of computer hardware and operating systems, each of which stored and processed data in very different ways. | |||
In the 1980's, people used the [[C programming language]] to make [[Remote Procedure Calls]] from one computer to another across the internet. But such RPC programming, or "sockets programming" as it was sometimes called, was cumbersome and difficult to achieve. And it was especially difficult when the two endpoints of the connection were on different hardware or operating systems. | |||
A second, related goal was to achieve electronic commerce. People desired to place orders on their local computer have the orders transmitted electronically to remote computers, perhaps located in different companies, for fulfillment. This led to an effort called Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which attempted to define messaging for such exchanges of orders. The messaging style used in the 1980's was ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation), which was complex and difficult to work with. | |||
In the 1990's, Microsoft Windows introduced new technologies for creating remotely callable libraries across a network. [[COM]], [[COM+]], and [[DCOM]] were successive generations of the Microsoft technology, and these kinds of remote libraries could be created and deployed rapidly if both endpoint computers were running Microsoft Windows. In response to the growing success of COM on Windows, the UNIX world (led by Sun Microsystems) created a consortium, Open Management Group (OMG), that defined CORBA as a remote calling technology for UNIX and Linux. | |||
Revision as of 19:13, 3 December 2008
Web services is a broad term encompassing a variety of ways of obtaining information over the internet. Since Microsoft's .NET platform became available in 2002, the term has been used predominantly to refer to two distinct methods by which computer programs can request information from remote computers. These methods are Web services with SOAP and Web services with REST.
History
As soon as there were programming languages, computer programmers have desired to reuse certain programs to avoid "reinventing the wheel". One of the ways people envisioned reusing software was to provide libraries of code which could be called by other programmers. Ever since the advent of the internet, programmers sought ways to call the code in libraries from remote host computers. But such remote calling was difficult because there were many different types of computer hardware and operating systems, each of which stored and processed data in very different ways.
In the 1980's, people used the C programming language to make Remote Procedure Calls from one computer to another across the internet. But such RPC programming, or "sockets programming" as it was sometimes called, was cumbersome and difficult to achieve. And it was especially difficult when the two endpoints of the connection were on different hardware or operating systems.
A second, related goal was to achieve electronic commerce. People desired to place orders on their local computer have the orders transmitted electronically to remote computers, perhaps located in different companies, for fulfillment. This led to an effort called Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which attempted to define messaging for such exchanges of orders. The messaging style used in the 1980's was ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation), which was complex and difficult to work with.
In the 1990's, Microsoft Windows introduced new technologies for creating remotely callable libraries across a network. COM, COM+, and DCOM were successive generations of the Microsoft technology, and these kinds of remote libraries could be created and deployed rapidly if both endpoint computers were running Microsoft Windows. In response to the growing success of COM on Windows, the UNIX world (led by Sun Microsystems) created a consortium, Open Management Group (OMG), that defined CORBA as a remote calling technology for UNIX and Linux.