Reputation: 28858

Does the word "Webservice" imply a specific format?

When I talk to an developer from the Microsoft ASP.NET world and he uses the word "Webservice", does that word in every case imply a specific data format (XML? SOAP?)?

Or is it just anything you can call via http(s)?

Upvotes: 2

Answers (6)

stevenrcfox

Reputation: 1567

Personally I mean any HTTPHandler!

That means under ASP.NET, a page is a webservice that returns HTML.

WCF extends that concept, because by default, WCF service requests in ASP.NET are processed by Modules not Handlers.

So really any web request is a service.

Typically though ASP.NET developers will be refering to SOAP unless they prefix i.e. WCF Webservices,

Upvotes: 0

Fabian Vilers

Reputation: 2982

I can only agree with Paul, anything queried over the web, using the http(s) protocol and not browser oriented. But any web service should also have the functionality of being discovered (WDSL and so on).

Upvotes: 0

Martin Brown

Reputation: 25310

In my experience this completly depends upon who you are talking to. For some ASP.Net developers this is only SOAP for others it includes other things like REST. If you are planning on using the term in a specification it would be a good idea to be a bit more specific.

Upvotes: 1

JaredPar

Reputation: 754715

If an Asp.Net developer says WebService, you can pretty much bet that they are talking about XML/SOAP.

However this is not universally true. I think it's just fine to call anything a WebService if 1) the data source is available via the web or 2) it is a web address that can provide back information given a set of inputs.

For example, StackOverflow.com allows for screen scraping of the User pages in order for 3rd party applications to be built. It's not specifically XML/SOAP but I would consider it a Web Service (format #1)

Upvotes: 1