Definition - Web Services

Web Services are “network applications that use SOAP and WSDL to exchange information in the form of WSDL documents.” [5]

Though distributed object protocols like CORBA-IIOP, DCOM or RMI already exist, the concept of web services is strongly discussed. Since web services rely on standard protocols (SOAP, WSDL), they are independent of the underlying implementation. Thus, they allow for interoperability across platforms. Former technologies require proprietary protocols and/or the Java language to enable network communication.