Introduction
One of the more confusing items about Web Services regards defining exactly what and why they are. Let's begin with why they exist.
Web Services exist to make it easier to integrate applications. Existing technologies include Java RMI, CORBA, and DCOM. All of these technologies work over networked environments and allow for application integration. This application integration is possible if all the components are reachable over a LAN. However, when going out to the public Internet, these networked applications start to break down. Another problem is that none of these technologies work well for cross platform, cross language integration. Often, working with one of these technologies ties you to a particular language, operating system, ...
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