What is .NET?
.NET is the Microsoft Web services strategy to connect information, people, systems, and devices through software. Integrated across the Microsoft platform, .NET technology provides the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage and use connected, security-enhanced solutions with Web services.
Solutions that are .NET-connected provide businesses with the ability to integrate their systems more rapidly and in a more agile manner, and help them realise the promise of information anytime, anywhere, on any device.
The Microsoft platform includes everything a business needs to develop and deploy a Web service-connected IT architecture: servers to host Web services, development tools to create them and applications to use them.
What are Web Services?
Web services are small, reusable applications written in XML, a universal language for data exchange. They allow data to be communicated across the Internet (or internal Intranet) between otherwise unconnected sources that are enabled to host them or act on them.
Connecting Applications through Web Services
Web services have revolutionised how applications talk to other applications – or, more broadly, how computers talk to other computers – by providing a universal data format that lets data be easily adapted or transformed. Based on XML, the universal language of Internet data exchange, Web services can communicate across platforms and operating systems, regardless of the programming language in which the applications are written.
Each Web service is a discrete unit of code that handles a limited set of tasks. Although Web services remain independent of each other, they can loosely link themselves into a collaborating group that performs a particular task.
Benefits of Web Services
Web services are used to re-enable information technology so that it can change, move, and adapt like other aspects of a business. They not only connect systems, they can help connect people with the information they need, within the software applications they are used to using, and wherever they happen to be.
By enabling applications to share data across different hardware platforms and operating systems, internal and external to the company, Web services help businesses to connect with their customers, partners and employees more effectively and efficiently.
Key benefits:
- Generate new business opportunities by making it easy to connect with partners.
- Deliver dramatically more personal, integrated experiences to users through the new breed of smart devices – including PCs.
- Save time and money by reducing development cycles.
- Increase revenue streams by enabling businesses to easily make their own Web services available to others.
Industry-standard Protocols
Web services also make it possible for developers to choose between building all the pieces of their applications themselves, or by consuming Web services created by others. This means that an individual company doesn't have to supply every piece required for a complete solution. The ability to expose your own Web services also creates new revenue streams for your company.
Web services are invoked over the Internet by means of industry-standard protocols including SOAP; XML; and Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI). They are defined through public standards organizations such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).