The ultimate goal of Web services, many vendors say, is to let Internet applications interact with each other the same way humans interact with them. Exactly how that will happen remains unclear, but Web services proponents say just as the Internet is navigated by humans using Web browsers, applications will be able to navigate the Web and interact using emerging Web service standards. Web services promise to offer a standard API that will let any two companies conduct e-business transactions, regardless of their IT infrastructure. The technology lets one company's inventory management application interact with a trading partner's product shipping application, even if the applications are running on different platforms. And emerging standards will help companies locate potential business partners based on the services the partners offer, and ensure that their respective apps can work together.
Web services use XML to let applications talk to one another.
What you now have is companies trying to do business in such a rapid environment, they need to immediately set up compatible systems. They can free themselves from the idea that they have to know what's running on the other end. Still Too New The Web services standards and products are so new that not many companies are deploying them yet. To reduce paper and mailing costs and speed up forms processing by eliminating time-consuming fax exchanges, CSE built an insurance premium rating application that uses SOAP to link the rating app to a forms app that can be accessed by CSE agents and underwriters via a Web interface. The rating application's engine is a set of algorithms and tables from which insurance premium rates are set based on state-approved variables, such as coverage, territory and risk.