| web service | |
 | A web service (also webservice) is traditionally defined by the W3C as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-processable format (specifically Web Services Description Language WSDL). Other systems interact with the web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with other web-related standards. Web services today are frequently just Application Programming Interfaces (API) or web APIs that can be accessed over a network, such as the Internet, and executed on a remote system hosting the requested services. |
