It is a well-known fact that since the emergence of
Internet, web and Ecommerce applications have become
increasingly popular. With the growing demand of webbased
applications, a number of issues have also increased
proportionately regarding scalability, interoperability and
application integration. "Web Services", which is a new
XML based framework introduced by W3C (World Wide
Web consortium) has addressed several of these issues.
Web Services defines a standard for achieving smooth
communication among discrete application systems by
using a framework based on the exchange of messages and
documents in XML over standard internet protocols.
Because Web Services comprises of other additional
components (SOAP, WSDL and UDDI) apart from XML,
it is widely used in large-scale enterprise applications and
often its potential is overlooked in small business
applications. Nevertheless, Web Services when employed
in small-scale applications not only renders interoperability
but also improves scalability to a great extent.