# Web Services

## What

* Web service is a standardized medium to propagate communication between the client and server applications on the World Wide Web.
* Web services provide a common platform that allows multiple applications built on various programming languages to have the ability to communicate with each other
* Common Protocols
  * SOAP
    * Simple Object Access Protocol.
    * SOAP was developed as an intermediate language so that applications built on various programming languages could talk quickly to each other and avoid the extreme development effort.
  * WSDL
    * Web Services Description Language(WSDL).
    * WSDL is an XML-based file which tells the client application what the web service does and gives all the information required to connect to the web service.
  * REST
    * REpresentational State Transfer.
    * REST is used to build Web services that are lightweight, maintainable, and scalable.
  * GraphQL

## Comparison

* SOAP and REST
  * [https://www.guru99.com/comparison-between-web-services.html](https://www.guru99.com/comparison-between-web-services.html)

## Links

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web\_service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service)
