Web Services
Question: Describe several scenarios in which web services could be useful.
Answer: In general, web services are useful when an application
on one computer wants to get information from an application that runs
on some other computer or when one application wants to give instructions
to other applications. Here are a few scenarios:
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A web service that returns the current exchange rate for currencies.
It can be used by a bank application to compute the value of a money
transaction that is given in a foreign currency.
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Web services that return the price of a certain article and the number
of items in stock. An application could find out the cheapest price
of a certain article by asking several suppliers and by placing an
electronic order.
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A web service that tells whether a certain student has registered
for a course. The access software for a computer laboratory could
use this web service to verify that the student is authorized to
use the lab.
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A web service that is given an ISB number of a book and returns
detailed information about this book. This could be used by book
stores and libraries to obtain detailed information from publishers.
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Web services that allow the remote control of house equipment.
This could be used by an application that controls the heating
of a house, the refrigerator or the air conditioning.
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Web services that query a POP server for emails that are stored
for a certain user. This could be used by an email client or by
an application that searches the emails for certain words.
A rich collection of web services can be found on
http://www.xmethods.com
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