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Lotus Instant Messaging/ Web Conferencing ... - IBM Redbooks

Lotus Instant Messaging/ Web Conferencing ... - IBM Redbooks

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4.1 Overview of <strong>Web</strong> servicesAs you may already be well aware, <strong>Web</strong> services have gained tremendousinterest and coverage in the IT industry in recent years. There have been manybooks published on the topic, so we do not attempt to cover the completespectrum of <strong>Web</strong> services in this chapter. We do, however, give a briefintroduction, so you may gain an understanding as to why you may want to use<strong>Web</strong> services.4.1.1 What is a <strong>Web</strong> service?A widely accepted definition for a <strong>Web</strong> service is:“A self-contained, self-describing, modular application that can be published,located and invoked across the <strong>Web</strong>.”<strong>Web</strong> services enable the creation of applications that navigate, discover, and useother applications, in much the same way that people navigate, discover, anduse <strong>Web</strong> sites and <strong>Web</strong>-based business applications.With <strong>Web</strong> services, any business system can expose its underlying functionalityin new ways. A <strong>Web</strong> services layer allows developers to easily and dynamicallyincorporate that system’s functionality in any application, regardless of thelanguage it is written in or the platform it runs on. Once a <strong>Web</strong> service isdeployed, other applications (and other <strong>Web</strong> services) can discover and invokethe deployed service. The <strong>Web</strong> services model shifts the focus to integratingapplications, independent of platform, language, or data structure.4.1.2 <strong>Web</strong> service fundamentals<strong>Web</strong> services are built on the foundation of two technologies:► XML: The universal language for data description. XML’s separation ofcontent and presentation allows data to be manipulated in a reliable,automated way. Instructions or content represented by XML can beunderstood by any application that supports XML.► SOAP: The Simple Object Access Protocol uses XML messages to invokeremote methods. A <strong>Web</strong> service could interact with remote machines throughHTTP’s POST and GET methods, but SOAP is much more robust and flexible.In a typical <strong>Web</strong> services scenario, a business application sends a request to aservice at a given URL using the SOAP protocol over HTTP. The service receivesthe request, processes it, and returns a response.84 <strong>Lotus</strong> <strong>Instant</strong> <strong>Messaging</strong>/<strong>Web</strong> <strong>Conferencing</strong> (Sametime): Building Sametime-Enabled Applications

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