Web Services in general:

• Good overview of UDDI and WebServices here:
  • http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-xpc3.html
  • http://www.perfectxml.com/articles/xml/wsnature.asp
• Microsoft article on WebServices:
  • http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/02/webcomp/webcomp.asp
• More stuff:
  • http://www.15seconds.com/Issue/010430.htm
  • http://www.xmlmethods.net/
• Alternative ways of building WebServices:
  • REST is an HTTP-based alternative to SOAP and XmlRpc, with some advantages

Web Services and Open Source:

• Codev: WebServicesUDDIorWebDAV, TWikiAsWebServicesServer, TWikiAsWebServicesClient, SoapLite (a Perl Implementation)
• Wiki: Wiki:SoapProtocol, Wiki:WebServices
• Will Open Source Lose the Battle for the Web? (by Ganesh Prasad)
  • http://www.varlinux.org/article.php?sid=345
  • This article argues that the shift towards web services has reduced the attractiveness of the current generation of Open Source web products. The only solution is for Open Source to adopt a web services architecture, and fast.
• The website of the JBoss Open Source application server
  • http://www.jboss.org/
• A (mainly pro-J2EE) site for builders of server-side applications
  • http://www.theserverside.com/
• A good portal site and community forum for those interested in web services
  • http://www.webservices.org/

-- MartinCleaver - 14 May 2001
-- PeterThoeny - 25 Aug 2001

WebServices is still a great way of providing a standard programmatic interface to TWiki. I want to be able to programmatically upload pictures to TWiki from ThumbsPlus? and if both apps implement the standard this integration could be done without any particular coding for the other app.

-- MartinCleaver - 15 May 2001

The exist http mechanism if fine for uploading pictures - that's how TWikiDraw works.

-- JohnTalintyre - 15 May 2001

True, but I would have to write an adapter for every other application that needed to talk to TWiki. With WebServices I could just configure the mapping of parameters on the other app and tell it where the server is then job done. No CGI, no HTTP post, no programming per se.

-- MartinCleaver - 16 May 2001

I am chasing this through: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&ic=1&th=f3d17d7100a5dfbf,10&seekm=1864c31.0106030737.10b5711e%40posting.google.com#p

-- MartinCleaver - 04 Jun 2001

Hey, that enquiry died a death!

-- MartinCleaver - 11 Jun 2001

Changing the software distribution paradigm again ( http://www.webservicesarchitect.com/content/articles/johnston01.asp ) by Joe Johnston.

Web Services are a kind of Lingua Franca for application components. They are a way for programs on one machine to use the resources of another machine by, for example, making remote procedure calls (RPC). Although binary RPC has been around for decades, Web Services encode their conversations in XML and most commonly talk across the ubiquitous web protocol, HTTP. In this way, Web Services are far easier to understand and debug than traditional RPC. Because every language that wants to communicate with a Web Service must 'speak' XML, clients written in one language can make Web Service requests to servers written in a different language. Even more interesting is that operating system distinctions are also greatly diminished.

-- MartinCleaver - 11 Jun 2001

See REST for an alternative way of writing web services that is less RPC-focused and can make use of existing HTTP expertise/technology in areas such as firewalls and caching.

-- RichardDonkin - 18 Apr 2002

Here is a ThePerlJournal? article on building WebServices using XmlRpc:

• http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1784/sam05060001/tpj05060001.htm

-- MartinCleaver - 30 May 2002