6.5. Web services

The term web services means many different things, depending on the source and the audience. To some, it’s a nebulous marketing term that’s never pinned down; to others, it’s a rigid and specific set of protocols and standards. We’re going to tackle it as a general concept, without defining it in depth, but not leaving it entirely undefined either.

Web services are a means of exposing an API over a technology-neutral network endpoint. They’re a means to call a remote method or operation that’s not tied to a specific platform or vendor and get a result. By this definition, POX over the network is included; so are REST and SOAP—and so is any other method of exposing operations and data on the wire in a neutral manner.