It’s common for us to forget things over time, so today we’re going to remember something that perhaps many people no longer remember.
Talking about Web Services or in English Web Services is realizing that they are nothing more or less than solutions for applications to communicate, or in other words for one application to talk to another, regardless of the language, software or hardware (regardless of the platform).
Initially, Web Services were created to exchange messages using the XML language, over the HTTP protocol, being identified by a URI.
In short, we can say that: Web Services are APIs that communicate through networks over the HTTP protocol. Every Web Service is an API, but not every API is a Web Service.
API’s can run on different protocols, but Web Services only run on the HTTP protocol.
In this case: Web Service ends up being an API that runs on the web.
Benefits
Common Language – Because there are many programming languages today, it is very difficult to make two different systems talk to each other. However, you can use a common language between both applications involved, for example: JSON or XML.
Integration – Because both applications have a common language for exchanging information, new integrations become easier.
Implementation Reuse – Since the return is always the same, it is much easier to reuse this implementation.
Security – The Web Service takes care of everything, the rest is on the intranet, only the Web Service will have access to the database.
Costs – In terms of cost, it’s cheaper to do integrations, especially if you have a Web Service, with it, you don’t need to create solutions for customers who want to access their data.
Architectures used in Web Services
SOAP – It is more related to XML and will always be used with it.
REST – It can be related to XML or JSON as well as other markup languages.
Note: Please make a point of leaving your point of view in the comments! This way we become more consistent. And if this content is somehow conveying the wrong idea, please feel free to correct it. It will be very useful for me and the community.
Glossary
URI – Uniform Resource Identifier
XML – Extensible Markup Language
JSON – JavaScript Object Notation
Intranet – Private Network