What is a Web Service?
A Web Service is a component of an application which is used for communication between the server and client.
For instance, a web service allows a user to send his search query to Google, and a web service allows Amazon to send product information to the customer’s desktop.
What are the different types of Web Services?
The four main types of Web Services used widely on the Internet are-
- WDSL – Web Service Description Language
- SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol
- RDF – Resource Description Framework
- RSS – Really Simple Syndication
All the four internally use XML (eXtensible Markup Language) for implementation.
The web service most relevant to me is RSS – Really Simple Syndication.
I use RSS for –
- gaining access to newsfeeds from various blogs and websites – this helps me keep up to date with news items that are relevant to me – without having to subscribe to email newsletters
- advertising my own blog posts and distributing them to interested readers
I like working with RSS as-
- it is lightweight
- it is flexible – can curtail an RSS fed to deploy only the title and short summary, or make it heavier to push the body of the texts and graphics
- non-intrusive – communication and data transfer is possible without users having to sign up, or users being flooded by emails
- many free RSS readers applications and websites are available – I earlier used Google Reader, but since they stopped services, I switched to Feedly and Feedburner
- almost all websites support RSS and provide feeds which don’t require signing up
- free blog and website building platforms have inbuilt provisions for RSS – making it easier for a webmaster/blog owner/publisher to reach out to their readers
- it is XML-based – which makes it light, powerful, and adaptable – ideal for the Internet
Example of RSS-
DarkReading.com has RSS feeds located in this link-
http://www.darkreading.com/rss_feeds.asp
If you view the actual RSS file- http://www.darkreading.com/rss_simple.asp
you’ll notice that it is an XML document with multiple “item” nodes. Each node gives information of a particular article in the website-
And yes, you can find the RSS of this website here: http://www.divyaaradhya.com/feed/
References-
1. XML Web Services. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_services.asp