Web service

A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over a network. It is a software function provided at a network address over the web with the service always on as in the concept of utility computing.

The W3C defines a Web service as:

a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-processable format (specifically WSDL). Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with other Web-related standards.

The W3C also states:

We can identify two major classes of Web services:

REST-compliant Web services, in which the primary purpose of the service is to manipulate XML representations of Web resources using a uniform set of stateless operations; and
Arbitrary Web services, in which the service may expose an arbitrary set of operations

Explanation

method of communication that allows two software systems to exchange this data over the internet. The software system that requests data is called a service requester, whereas the software system that would process the request and provide the data is called a service provider.

Different software might be built using different programming languages, and hence there is a need for a method of data exchange that doesn't depend upon a particular programming language. Most types of software can, however, interpret XML tags. Thus, web services can use XML files for data exchange.

Rules for communication between different systems need to be defined, such as:

• How one system can request data from another system
• Which specific parameters are needed in the data request
• What would be the structure of the data produced. Normally, data is exchanged in XML files, and the structure of the XML file is validated against an .xsd file.
• What error messages to display when a certain rule for communication is not observed, to make troubleshooting easier

All of these rules for communication are defined in a file called WSDL (Web Services Description Language), which has the extension .wsdl.

Web services architecture: the service provider sends a WSDL file to UDDI. The service requester contacts UDDI to find out who is the provider for the data it needs, and then it contacts the service provider using the SOAP protocol. The service provider validates the service request and sends structured data in an XML file, using the SOAP protocol. This XML file would be validated again by the service requester using an XSD file.

A directory called UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) defines which software system should be contacted for which type of data. So when one software system needs one particular report/data, it would go to the UDDI and find out which other system it can contact for receiving that data. Once the software system finds out which other system it should contact, it would then contact that system using a special protocol called SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). The service provider system would first of all validate the data request by referring to the WSDL file, and then process the request and send the data under the SOAP protocol.

Web API

A web API is a development in web services where emphasis has been moving to simpler representational state transfer (REST) based communications. RESTful APIs do not require XML-based web service protocols (SOAP and WSDL) to support their interfaces.

Automated design methods

Automated tools can aid in the creation of a web service. For services using WSDL, it is possible to either automatically generate WSDL for existing classes (a bottom-up model) or to generate a class skeleton given existing WSDL (a top-down model).

• A developer using a bottom-up model writes implementing classes first (in some programming language), and then uses a WSDL generating tool to expose methods from these classes as a web service. This is simpler to develop but may be harder to maintain if the original classes are subject to frequent change.
• A developer using a top-down model writes the WSDL document first and then uses a code generating tool to produce the class skeleton, to be completed as necessary. This model is generally considered more difficult but can produce cleaner designs and is generally more resistant to change. As long as the message formats between sender and receiver do not change, changes in the sender and receiver themselves do not affect the web service. The technique is also referred to as contract first since the WSDL (or contract between sender and receiver) is the starting point.

Web services that use markup languages

There are a number of web services that use markup languages:

JSON-RPC
JSON-WSP
Web template
Web Services Description Language (WSDL) from the W3C
XML Interface for Network Services (XINS) provides a POX-style Web service specification format
Web Services Conversation Language (WSCL)
Web Services Flow Language (WSFL) (superseded by BPEL)
WS-MetadataExchange
Representational state transfer (REST) versus remote procedure call (RPC)
XML-RPC - XML - Remote Procedure Call

Criticisms

Critics of non-RESTful web services often complain that they are too complex and based upon large software vendors or integrators, rather than typical open source implementations.

There are also concerns about performance due to web services' use of XML as a message format and SOAP/HTTP in enveloping and transporting.

Regression Testing of Web service

Functional and non-functional web service testing is done with the help of WSDL parsing and regression testing is performed by identifying the changes made thereafter. Web service regression testing needs can be categorized in three different ways, namely, changes in WSDL, changes in code, and selective re-testing of web service operations. To capture the above, three intermediate forms of WSDL, namely, Difference WSDL (DWSDL), Unit WSDL (UWSDL), and Reduced WSDL (RWSDL), respectively can be used. These intermediate forms are then combined to form Combined WSDL (CWSDL) which is further used for regression testing of the web service. This will help in Automatic Web Service Change Management (AWSCM), by performing the selection of the relevant test cases to construct a reduced test suite from the old test suite.

Website Design Company in bangalore | SEO Company Bangalore | Graphic Design Company Bangalore