TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter is a story of a business trip that illustrates how a service-oriented architecture and Web Services might be used in the not-too-distant future. It provides a vision of how a service-oriented architecture might work in an organization.
| Note | The term Web Services can be confusing. It is, unfortunately, often used in many different ways. Compounding this confusion is the term services, which has a different meaning than the term Web Services. In this book, the term Web Services refers to the technologies that allow for making connections. Services are what you connect together using Web Services. A service is the endpoint of a connection. Also, a service has some type of underlying computer system that supports the connection offered. The combination of services internal and external to an organization make up a service-oriented architecture. A term less commonly used is composite application. A composite application is created by combining services. Composite applications are built using a service-oriented architecture. |
This is the story of C. R. C. R. is short for Connected Representative. C. R. is about to take a business trip that will occur in the not-too-distant future. This trip is much like any business trip. It will involve flying to California from the Midwest, renting a car, and visiting several customers in different cities over 3 or 4 days.
To start his trip planning, C. R. uses his browser to see all the possible customers he could visit within driving distance of his destination city.
Although...
