What is Web Service?

Web Services are just like functions. We can define web service as a collection of functions which can be recalled. The description of this function calls is defined in a XML file called WSDL (Web Services Description Language). Functions are recalled through SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). This SOAP uses HTTP for transmission. XML is the basis for Web services. It provides a language which can be used between different platforms and programming language and still express complex messages and functions.So basically Web Services use XML to code and decode data and SOAP to transport it. Web Services are platform independent. They are also independent for the programming language. With Web Servics, Win 2k servers can be connected with UNIX servers.