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5.4. Web Services Protocol Support

The Internet is reaching a stage where automatic processes want to rely on other sites and services presenting their uses in a standard way. This is Web Services. What ever an organization or repository of data contains the it needs to be exploited as fully as possibly. This is exposing existing systems as Web Services. These need to be accessible over well known protocols which combine to provide a service over the web.

SQL provides the means to query data within a database. This is a very well known and supported operation. The query may or may not be able to make use of free text indexes to obtain results faster and more accurately from textual sources. The source could even come from a remote database contacted over ODBC, JDBC or OLEDB - more well supported standards. The results may be shipped to another server for further processing. Further processing could include transformations into various XML's directly or via an XSLT stylesheet. This collaboration of services can be enhanced further with other Web and Internet protocols for the grand objective of making parts of useful information or ability consumable over the Internet as a Web Service.

Figure 5.1. Towards Web Services...

Towards Web Services...