Webservices for everyone

In this text I will explain ecosystem of independent developers and niche web service providers which will continue to emerge from the rise of technologies of web services, open APIs, new HTML 5 development tools and web browser based client devices. Web-applications are applications that run on the web. These are the applications that are built around the Web browser standards and thus can be used by any browser on any platform. By using Web services, your application feeds constantly its functions to the rest of the world to consume. By  utilizing  standard documentation of the web services (UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration),  WSDL (Web Services Description Language) your fellow application  developer can then easily start building its own application or web  based on your service by using standardized way of calling your web service’s “services”.

Web services use traditionally XML to code and to decode data. Data is transportable over the Internet by using open standard Internet protocol, HTTP(hypertext transfer  protocol).  Different kind of Internet (client) applications can then be programmed to use web services.  Messages are transferred over HTTP using different web protocols such as SOAP, RPC-XML and REST. Each of the these message protocols have their own pros and cons for using messaging  and  transferring  data. If you seriously consider to build web services of your own, you first need to to understand what does they really mean in terms of quality of your service  to choose one protocol instead of other.

Why I would need to understand web services if I am building just  web site or UI for the web application?

By understanding and possible by using yourself web services at your web site or web application or at your mash-up you could make better and more extensible and maintainable web thing.. Similar manner as you your building your web map -video -mash up consisting from the multiple APIs, in the IP world you could build up same kind of modularity by using  web services. Services can be then scaled, applied to multiple platforms and multiple devices as long as Internet connection is in place and standardized way of using protocols and service calls are used at your application.

Most recently many lightweight mostly javascript based “middleware” tools and frameworks has been developed in the markets to help you, fellow developer, to make  applications that can be -after deployed to server- to be run at multiple platforms at once. Mobile SDKs such as MoSync and PhoneGap enable developers  to design and code mobile UI with html, css and javascript but then native features of the different devices are triggered with the toolset. These tools also allows designers and  developers  to design and build applications from single code base while deploying the applications with help of the tool’s middleware  for the multiple operating system  platforms. Over the time these tools will help more and more entry level programmer and web hobbyists and activist of all kinds to start to start developing mobile applications for multiple operating system devices, and for this reason possibly leading into cross-platform disruption at the mobile application, service and content businesses. In conjunction with client side web development, there will be more and more server and service side development towards  vertical markets, current use of RSS, web services and APIs  of all kinds, and generally speaking  whole service orientation at the  web development businesses  are leading  us to this way.

This text was originally written at Mozilla #teachtheweb MOOC