Treffer: Enterprise System Integration with Web Services: A Case Study with a Book Broker Application

ii Web services are gaining a tremendous amount of momentum in recent years as a viable tool in distributed computing. Web Services have evolved from other distributed technologies, which include Java RMI, CORBA, and DCOM, but their specification deficiencies with respect to complete platform and programming language independence, and interoperability are creating a need for a more suitable solution. Despite its youth, Web Services offer to provide such a solution by inheriting the beneficial traits of its predecessors, utilization of an IDL in the form of a WSDL (Web Service Description Language) for one, and at the same time, avoiding the negative aspects associated with its predecessors, which include tight coupling specifications, potential for firewall blocking, long development times, and higher costs. Through the use of standardized technologies (HTTP, SOAP, and XML), Web Services offer to deliver results. I present a book broker in two formats: as a web interface and as a Composite Web Service. Both formats provide book-pricing data from various vendors and book search functionality based on any combination of factors, such as author, title, publisher, keyword and ISBN. The purpose of this project is to provide a publicly accessible book broker that is superior in functionality to existing book brokers today, to enable developers to integrate my Web Service into their own applications, promoting data exchange regardless of the platform or programming language being used and lastly, to provide a good case study of how to bring out the best in Web Services.