Terminology

Web Service Terminology

MEP (Message Exchange Pattern): An abstract presentation of how the SOAP framework specification can be extended to meet some specific communication needs.

PPM (Perl Package Manager): A command line tool that you can use to install e.g. Perl modules (like DBI database modules for e.g. DB2, MySql, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, ...).

RPC (Remote Procedure Call): A protocol that allows a computer program running on one host to invoke a procedure on another host with input data, and receive output data from that host.

SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture): A software architectural concept that defines the use of services to support the requirements of software users. In a SOA environment, nodes on a network make resources available to other participants in the network as independent services that the participants access in a standardized way. Most definitions of SOA identify the use of Web services (using SOAP and WSDL) in its implementation. However, one can implement SOA using any service-based technology.

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol): A standard for exchanging XML-based messages over a computer network, normally using HTTP. SOAP forms the foundation layer of the web services stack, providing a basic messaging framework that more abstract layers can build on.

UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration): A platform-independent, XML-based registry for businesses worldwide to list themselves on the Internet. UDDI enables businesses to discover each other and define how they interact over the Internet.

URI (Universal Resource Identifier): An Internet protocol element consisting of a short string of characters that conform to a certain syntax. The string comprises a name or address that can be used to refer to a resource.

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium): The driving force behind the largest number of highly adopted standards in the Web services space including some Web building blocks such as HTML. W3C is a trademark owned by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics and/or Keico (Keio University).

Web Service: An application programming service that can be accessed remotely via standard Internet protocols using XML as the data format.

WSDL (Web Services Definition Language): An XML based standard designed to describes protocol bindings and message formats of Web services. WSDL is often pronounced as "Whiz-Dull".