Useful Links

Trying to keep up with the fast developing world of web services is very difficult. There are two possible approaches: start with the W3C Web Services activity and Web Services Architecture or start with a web services toolkit for your favourite language. The following are some initial links

• http://www.xmethods.net - example web services, links to tutorials etc.
• http://www.webservicex.net/WS/default.aspx XML web services solution provides - similar to http://www.xmethods.net
• http://www.w3c.org/2002/ws/ - web services activity at W3C, this includes the work on WSDL and SOAP(XML Protocol) standards
• http://ws.apache.org/axis/ - apache axis is the toolkit that has been most extensively used within the myGrid project
• http://www.webservices.org - news on what is happening in the web services world
• http://www.ebpml.org/ - A website dedicated to the architecture and technologies of Business Process Management Systems (BPMS)
• http://www.bluestone.com/SaISAPI.dll/SaServletEngine.class/products/hp_web_services/default.jsp - HP Web services platform homepage
• http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/ - IBM's web services zone
• http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-secure/ - Security: Web Services Security (WS- Security)
• http://www.uddi.org - UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration)
• http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-uml1/ - UML: Deriving Web services from UML models
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/NOTE-wsdl-20010315 - WSDL (Web Services Description Language)
• http://www-4.ibm.com/software/solutions/webservices/pdf/WSFL.pdf - WSFL: Web Services Flow Language specification from IBM
• http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/xml_wsspecs/xlang-c/ - Microsoft's alternative to IBM's WSFL
• ... or try searching using google

Getting Started

To just try out a web service, try the generic soap client from http://www.soapclient.com

For a technical perspective, the W3C's Web Services Architecture working document is a reasonable start. It is at http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-arch/

Other useful starting points are:

• http://joe.lindsay.net/webservices/
• http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/webservices/2002/02/12/webservicefaqs.html (Early 2002)

Bioinformatics

For example web services, see Bioinformatics web

Web Services literature

• http://sys-con.com/webservices/ Web Services Journal
• http://xml.coverpages.org/ is a good starting point for information on XML related topics, for example http://xml.coverpages.org/bpel4ws.html
• http://webservices.oreilly.com/ and http://webservices.xml.com/ from O'Reilly

Acronyms

To read web service speak, it helps to have a knowledge of the most common acronyms.

• WSDL Web Services Description Language - WSDL 1.2, by Web Services Description Working Group
• SOAP an XML protocol for web services - SOAP version 1.2
  • according to the W3C SOAP is a name not an acronym - it does not actually stand for anything. (SOAP did originally stand for Simple Object Access Protocol, and this was the starting point for the W3C XML protocol - http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/ )
• UDDI Universal Description, Discovery and Integration Service - http://www.uddi.org/

Other Information

WebAndGridServiceNewsAug03 - pointers to articles posted to myGrid mailing list

-- MarkGreenwood - 09 Oct 2003 (last update)