Talk:Web service

message: I don't see how the new images (derived from the one at the top) add anything. Furthermore, they really don't make much sense (this isn't XML-RPC, and they don't relate to points in the text). Unless someone disagrees, I'll remove them.  mnot 02:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Puting back a image: yes, two is a lot. Only one is ok for didatic. "RPC is a very popular usage of the web-service architecture, but is ONLY PART of the full architecture, and the image leaves it clearly". -- Krauss 25/sep/06
 
Isn't it so that information about three styles of use is a bit outdated? Wikipesia's article "Service-oriented architecture" states: Though many definitions of SOA limit themselves to technology or just Web Services, this is predominantly pushed by technology vendors; in 2003 they talked just of Web Services, while in 2006 the talk is of events and process engines.
It seems that SOA has overgrown its infancy and became to be a powerful paradigm:
http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2006/04/04/understanding-service-oriented-architecture.html
Sciagent 08:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Old discussion

message: I'd like to recommend the following resource links be added to the Web Services article under External Links:
* What is a web service? (simple and elegant definition)
* Web Services resource links (.NET Collective)
* Summary of Web Service Extensions (.NET Collective)
* Web Service Standard Resource Directory
* Java Web Service Resource Directory
* Online Webservice Client, just to call methods and see results
* Web services overview in layman's terms
Tohagan 00:20, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additional 'external link' for Web Services page. 

message: Could someone talk about the uses of Web services?  Looking for technical examples and business examples.  Why would a business look to utilize Web services?
Thanks.
76.187.219.94 15:20, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur. How and for what is all this used in real life? (As real as it can get...) Some examples if you please. Wipe (talk) 02:06, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

text: Excuse me but, what on earth do these 2 sentences mean ??? 194.250.5.173 (talk) 09:06, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  More non-technical detail 

message: In the Principles section of the REST –article we read:
-A protocol that is:
* Client/Server
* Stateless
* Cacheable
* Layered
From Web_service#Styles of use: -Here, the focus is on interacting with stateful resources, rather than messages or operations.
Can someone explain? --84.48.33.95 09:08, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: REST: Stateful or stateless (or both)?

message: There's some confusion in this article about Wire formats versus client APIs. There is a form of SOAP encoding called RPC/enc which predates XML schema (XSD), and was designed to allow you to marshall a graph of of native objects in a SOAP call. It is this that is discredited in WS-I, and somewhat deprecated in the current Java/C# SOAP stacks. Why? Because it was a nighmare of interoperability grief. 
There is also Remote Procedure Calls as a paradigm for client side invocation of web services, and that is very much with us. It is certainly intrinsic to Sun's Web Services APIs in Java, originally called [JAX-RPC] (Java XML API for RPC) and now called JAX-WS, Java XML API for web services). This is not deprecated by the main stream vendors, although I have argued very much that it should be :
cite: Loughran S. and Smith E., Rethinking the Java SOAP stack, proceedings IEEE International Conference of Web Services 2005, http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2005/HPL-2005-83.html 
I'm not going to edit the entry as I'm clearly biased, but I think that the article needs to explain about rpc/enc versus doc/lit and "wrapped" messages, separately from the actual programming model used client-side to make calls on a remote service.  
SteveLoughran 16:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: RPC 

message: There is a new criticism over XML as being slow for use of XML and SOAP envelope/HTTP transport. Are there any recent citations for this? The sole one that I am aware of is [], which would do as a first citation.
SteveLoughran 20:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Performance 

message: The introduction cites the W3C and lets it sound like the W3C definition is very broad about the usage of the term Web Service and only public perception and other standards like WS-I are narrowing it to WSDL/SOAP. This is actually not true, the complete cite from the W3C WS Glossary explicitely names WSDL and SOAP. The introduction should be reformulated to avoid this impression. Zefiro 15:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Boyprose, anyone and everyone is the "editor" of an article! :-)  So in revision 620424688 I tried to solve the general/specific problem by splitting the Web Services Architecture's  definition quotation into general and the WSA-specific version. I think this helps, we'll see if it survives. My editorializing that few web services actually implement the WSA definition needs a citation. Perhaps the general definition could just link to Web API, and/or the specific definition could link to WSDL, so this page would become a kind of "general"/"specific" disambiguation page with just that one split quotation.-- Skierpage (talk) 21:34, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope of the term "Web service" 

message: There has been a lot of vandalism editing lately, hasn't it ?
Any idea of the reason behind that? This is not a all public article so I just don't understand.
Do you think there is a need to act ? Dockurt2k 15:48, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: yes there has. There's no obvious cause; its just minor recreational vandalism rather than some concerted effort. If it can be kept under control, then good. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SteveLoughran (talk • contribs) 20:33, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: This article is of a very poor standard.Not really good. Lots of errors on this one
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.66.3.93 (talk • contribs) 13:06, 24 May 2007
:then fix it! :-) John Vandenberg 13:26, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's actually not fair. As it turns out, there are users out there who sometimes read articles about topics they are unfamiliar with, and there's no way you can know that this particular anonymous user doesn't belong to that group. It's difficult to demand of someone that they should read up on the topic not only to the point where they can discuss it in an unbiased way, but also so that they can explain it to others, just so that they can make some changes on Wikipedia. But of course, the criticism could've been more specific. --τις (talk) 11:00, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poor articel 

message: This article says that in common usage a Web Service is SOAP based.  I think that was true a few years ago but more and more the common understanding is that a Web Service is a service accessible from the web (i.e. via HTTP).  This seems to me, to be the simplest definition and the most fitting.
As evidence, I offer Amazon Web Services (AWS) which provides both SOAP and non-SOAP versions of their services.  If a web service must use SOAP, then it would be improper for Amazon to call these REST interfaces web services.  It's pretty plain to me that making SOAP a requirement of Web Services is a pointless distinction.
A lot of organizations are treating SOAP as a legacy protocol.  Personally I call SOAP "xml-CORBA".
I also don't understand the characterization of REST as emulating HTTP.  AFAIK, REST is defined in terms of HTTP.  It's not emulating the four operations of HTTP (get, put, post, delete), it's built on top of them.
Dubwai (talk) 19:52, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I see your point. Perhaps it should be clear this is SOAP web services and not RESTy ones (As amazon S3) or HTTP query abuse (amazon simpledb). Note that you can use the REST operations over other protocols (such as XMPP); you get the same state model over different transports. SteveLoughran (talk) 22:34, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outdated 

message: Untseac (talk) 00:46, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Capitalisation. SteveLoughran (talk) 16:42, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

text: As you spell Hypertext Transfer Protocol and Great Barrier Reef I feel Web Service more correct than Web service. If a native speaker could confirm this, the spelling in this article should be consolidated and the lemma be changed. --Gerd-HH (talk) 07:09, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  A 'Web service' (also Web Service) 

message: Here are some additional web services I recommend for addition to the main article.
http://www.ecubicle.net/youtubedownloader.asmx
http://www.ecubicle.net/driving.asmx
http://www.ecubicle.net/livestockquotes.asmx
http://www.ecubicle.net/whois_service.asmx
99.253.209.37 (talk) 07:48, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Web Services that you can use to learn and explore more about this topic 

message: I think this page should start with some disambiguation. A web service is just a generic term for some kind of network service that uses the web. A Web Service is the standard built on SOAP.
: I agree, but the general / specific split is not based on whether "Web Service" is capitalized. I split the starting quotation in revision 620424688, which helps. -- Skierpage (talk) 21:38, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  disambiguate between "web service" and "Web Service" 

message: This article is a mess.
Whoever wrote it doesn't seem to understand web services at all.
There are -two- kinds of web services, RPC and ROA (resource oriented architecture).  RPC offers services (ie. verbs/methods) and ROA offers nouns (XML/JSON for example).
RPC is typically associated with SOAP (hence the name - simple object access protocol - which accesses objects on the server to invoke their member functions).  It is similar to CORBA.  ROA is typically associated with REST (hence the name, ROA grabs a representation of content which is on the server and transfers it to the client).  It is similar to the rest of the web.
I started to fix the article, but it is so messed up, it really requires a total rewrite.
I've never seen a technical article on Wikipedia which is so uninformed (political articles are always a mess, but I always thought Wikipedia did a fairly good job of technical content) - 69.143.48.114 (talk) 14:49, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you, the article is a mess. Trying to make sense of what web services are from reading it is not easy. The most fundamental error is that it does not explain the purpose of web services. Which, if I understand it correctly, is as simple as machine-machine communications on the web instead of man-machine. This needs to be pointed out before any of the technical details is presented. I, unfortunately, do not have sufficent knowledge on the subject. Happy to review, fact check, etc. though. --Gosub (talk) 12:33, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

text: While I agree that SOA != SOAP (you can have web services over other transports), REST != HTTP is a bit misleading. Though true for REST in general RESTful web services do need to run over HTTP. -- Q Chris (talk) 11:12, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

text: I have disentangled the article, which should help some of the points raised above.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 01:45, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: SOA, Web Services, REST

message: I see some support for a complete rewrite of this article. It is a fairly important topic, but it is important to keep vendor/implementation bias out of it. The current article is pretty good about that. I would guess that most people that can contribute substantially will have experience with only a limited range of the available technologies. I propose changing things in stages. Identify major axes that can be used to partition what is a web-service from what isn't, and what separates different approaches. These can be added in as new sections, cannibalizing the old ones as needed to keep everything consistent/connected. In that vein, I'm starting with minor changes to more accurately describe the section on design methodologies, which is actually describing "automated design methodologies." Srjefferys (talk) 21:43, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Evolution

message: I'm studying computer science, but still think that this article explains next to nothing. The first sentence is "A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over a network." Can it be used for any kind of communication? Ping is a form of communication. Is a Web service then the preferred way to do a ping? Emailing is certainly communication. Do I use Web services every time I email someone? What most people would want to know is probably what kind of communication it refers to, and what is transmitted. Also, is there a server and a client, or is it peer-to-peer? Is the communication initiated by the user, or is this something done in the background? Do you have to know about it to use it or do the programs use it without the user's knowledge? Reading on, we find "Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP messages" a few sentences later. Okay, so now it's no longer a method, but rather a computer and SOAP is the method? But probably not, because later on it says "Web services are a set of tools that can be used in a number of ways" (a perfectly non-informative sentence by the way). My point is that I still have no clue what the whole concept is about. Let me know if I'm just too stupid to understand it, but otherwise I hope someone can rewrite at least the introduction. Someone other than me, that is. --τις (talk) 10:30, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm also a cs student, and I agree with the above. I could not really make much of the article. 85.101.129.75 (talk) 21:40, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

text: Quite.  What is a web service?? Flies 1 (talk) 15:59, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  An article for those who already know what a Web service is? 

message: Maybe a few examples would help. What are the biggest web services out there? What are the most interesting web services? And how do these work. And maye a counter example: "foobar.com provides intercomputer communication but is not considered a webservice because ...". 85.101.129.75 (talk) 21:42, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that this would be helpful. Flies 1 (talk) 15:57, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: I've read through this article, and it left me with no idea what a web service is.  The head is rendered unintelligible by the use of jargon.  What is a web service?  What does it do?  Who uses it, and what for? Flies 1 (talk) 15:56, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The article does not explain what a web service is adequately 

message: Why does this article explicitly specify that Web Services use XML?  If I have a JSON or YAML service that behaves in every other way like an XML Web Service, this article implies that it's not a Web Service.  Is that true?  I've worked with XML web services for 6 years with SOAP and all that fun stuff.  I don't see any reason why you can't do the same thing with JSON or YAML, so don't understand why this article doesn't acknowledge that there are options for the representation format.  I thought the key aspect of a web service was that it provided data over HTTP in the client-server context that HTTP was designed for.
I'm hoping someone can correct me or this article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by GlenPeterson (talk • contribs) 15:18, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Because in the Web Services Architecture "definition", web services use XML and WSDL.  I tried to clarify the distinction. -- Skierpage (talk) 21:42, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why no mention of JSON? 

message: The definition is not correct, even the single sentence that is currently in place:
Currently it reads that a webservice communicates from an electronic device to another electronic device. Even that is not the case. If I run webservice 1 on port 80 on localhost, open my browser and navigate to it. There are no different electronic devices. If I build a webserver that offers services to both external devices as well as service-to-service communication between the services on the same electronic device: there are no different electronic devices.
Secondly If I use a webservice from a company somewhere in the cloud, undoubtly it will run on something but I don't regard that as a device. Possibly on the other side there is a load balancer with a gazillion servers where somewhere the web services are served.
So to combine the above I think it is sharper to not define it as "a web service is a software component that listens to a specific port for a call. If the call is received it will execute functionality. (implementation can differ, transport can differ, an web service that only reacts on a timer without an interface and then write a log entry, has no clients)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.80.242.210 (talk) 12:06, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition 

message: I find the page hard to read. Would it be a good idea to not capitalize web in web service? Not sure if relevant, but Google and Microsoft use lower case web. Also the W3C glossary quote uses sentence case. Kinda related, the section about Ajax would also benefit from having fewer capital letters. Cru121 (talk) 12:38, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use sentence case 

message: I was suddenly seized with the urge to rewrite the article , but I figured I'd check on the Talk page first solicit support for  this. I see there's already been a tremendous amount—and I'm surprised that knowledgeable people (moreso than I) haven't rushed to fix it.
For one thing, I don't see that there's such a thing as a "W3C Web Service", and the two-item list in the lead is a false dichotomy. Web services are services supplied over the web by applications running on web servers. The W3C came up with a particular working definition and, as they do in many areas, prescribed specific practices, but they're still just web services, they aren't a different thing calling for capitalization as Web Services, and certainly not as W3C Web Services.
It's worth covering W3C's influence on web services, how they developed, and in what form they're provided, but there's nothing here to disambiguate. It's like saying hockey, on one hand, and the game played on ice with a puck and sticks under rules issued by the National Hockey League, on the other hand, are two different sports. Largoplazo (talk) 22:11, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  The article's still a mess