Encoding/Decoding Web Service: Web Service Provider
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This article gives you a brief introduction to web services. The tasks the service accomplishes are described, as well as some of its uses (such as Base64 encoding strings). A step by step method of creating an encoding service and testing the service in the VS2003 IDE is also described.
In this tutorial, the web service provider will be described. The provider provides the service, namely when the web service consumer (Client) makes requests of the provider with certain information, the provider operates on that information using methods defined to process the information and returns the processed information. For example, the Microsoft Passport service provides authentication services when the consumer sends the username and password credentials. In a wider context, every machine would function both as a server and a client relaying information from one point to another, processing only what is intended for that particular machine.
Interoperability is at the heart of the web services. Hence, all this communication between computers takes place regardless of the programming language and the operating system of the computers involved. This was not possible in the earlier distributed applications. This is has become possible because of the XML based architecture with open standard protocols. The web service protocol stack is shown in the following picture. During this tutorial you will be seeing some of the protocols from this stack at work in the example.
We will not be looking at UDDI, but we will come across the other protocols. After Web Service made its debut and Microsoft integrated it within the .NET Frame work and the VS 2003 IDE, the company added many enhancements to make it work better and more securely, described in what are known as Web Services Enhancements. With this bird's eye view of web services, the functionality that is provided by the example in the tutorial will be described.
Next: What Does the Service Do? >>
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