Introduction

Web services have evolved into a matured technology over the past few years. A web service, as the W3C consortium defines it, is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. Large enterprises are seeking ways to make IT more agile to support their business processes. On the one hand, they are trying to make the best out of the existing applications, and on the other hand, they are attempting to minimize the costs of developing new solutions.

The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) presents an architecture that enables agile IT technology for the business process management. With the appearance of web services, the foundation of modular applications was set in SOA. Since web services are technology-neutral, they enable high interoperability. While exposing small-scale application pieces or business services, web services enable integration and reusability. Both facts result in saving time and money.

Web services can be seen...