Web

Web Services
Services

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 What are web Services?
• A web service is a program that calls a method
which is on another computer on the network.
• A 'Web service' (also Web Service) is
defined by the W3C as "a software system
designed to support interoperable
Machine to Machine interaction over a
network"[1]. Web services are frequently just
Web APIs that can be accessed over a
network, such as the Internet, and executed
on a remote system hosting the requested
services.
(Wikipedia, accessed July 2008,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service)
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Web Services are Made Up of
• Two pieces of information;
– Method Info: what method is being
called.
– Scoping Info: what arguments are
needed.
• This information is packaged into an
envelope and transported across the
network.

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 Network Layers
• Each task is represented in a layer.
• The current layer systems is called the Internet
Protocol Stack.
• Each layer has a set of protocols that set the
rules for how each layer behaves.
• The protocols are to break the information down
into datagrams or packets so they can travel
over the network to their destination. Then the
same protocols are used at the destination to
put the datagrams / packets back to their
original format.

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Internet protocol Stack
• application: supporting
network applications
application
– FTP, SMTP, STTP
• transport: host-host data
transfer transport
– TCP, UDP
• network: routing of network
datagrams from source to
destination
– IP, routing protocols
link
• link: data transfer between
neighboring network
elements
– PPP, Ethernet

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 message
source Encapsulation
M application
segment Ht M transport
datagram Hn Ht M network
frame Hl Hn Ht M link

Hl Hn Ht M link Hl Hn Ht M

switch

destination
M application Hn Ht M network Hn Ht M
Ht M transport Hl Hn Ht M link Hl Hn Ht M
Hn Ht M network
Hl Hn Ht M link
router

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Technologies used over the web.
• HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
• RPC: Remote Procedure call.
• XML-RPC: Remote Procedure call encoded in
xml.
• SOAP: Simple Object Access Protocol.
• WSDL: Web Service Description Language.

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 Client-side Scripting
• Scripting is a technology that uses a set of
instructions to perform a task.
• Client-side Scripting is a web page saved as
a htm or html extension.
• These web pages can run on any computer
that has a web browser.
• These web pages are often referred to as
Static pages
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 Server-side Scripting
• Scripting is a technology that uses a set
of instructions to perform a task.
• Server-side scripting is a technology
that creates web pages that will only
operate when accessed from a web
server.
• Server-side scripting is also known as
Dynamic web pages.

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 Dynamic Web Pages
• One of the changes that evolved was the
first-generation Internet/intranet
application.

• It was an extension to Web servers and was

called Common Gateway Interface (CGI).

• CGI allowed Web sites to dynamically create

Web pages from a program typically written
in C or a scripting language such as Perl.

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Dynamic Web Pages cont.
• CGI added functionality to the Web

• CGI programs often exhausted memory

space on Windows computers

• These shortcomings eventually led to Active

Server Pages, or commonly called ASP.

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Dynamic Web Pages/ASP
• Active Server Pages (ASP) is a technology
that allows for the generation of HTML pages
that are responding to a set of instructions
(dynamic) prior to being delivered to the
browser.
• ASP is not a language
• ASP is browser independent
• Other technologies are;
– ASP.Net.
– PHP
– JSP
– Coldfusion

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 But What Makes an Active
Server Page Work?

Clients system

Request
1. Prestored instructions
Server written by author

Asp.dll Scripting Agents

HTML for display Pre processing

Translation to Execution
HTML

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 What is a web Server?
• A Web Server is made up of;

– A Server

&
– Web server software
• A web server is;
– Is a computer with software that distributes web pages to
users on demand
– Provides a storage area and organises the pages of a web site
– Can be a remote machine or your own computer

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What is a Web Server used
for?
• Storing
– Client-side scripting
– Server-side scripting
• Responding to a request.

3. Server locates files

1. Author
writes 4. Html and graphics
html and returned to user and
graphics are displayed in the
browser.

Server

2. Client requests web page

With the use of the web
browser. 15
User
 Web Protocols uses.
• TCP
– Transport Control Protocol
• HTTP
– Hypertext Transfer Protocol

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 TCP
What is TCP ?
• TCP is the protocol used by the browser to parcel up
the information, (including the http request), that is
required when the browser is to fetch another web
page.
• The TCP is a transport protocol, which provides a
reliable transmission format for the information to
be transmitted.
• The following are the services that TCP provides;
– connection-oriented: setup required between client and server
processes
– reliable transport between sending and receiving process
– flow control: sender won’t overwhelm receiver
– congestion control: throttle sender when network overloaded
– does not provide: timing, minimum bandwidth guarantees

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 What is HTTP?
HTTP: hypertext transfer protocol
• Http is the protocol used by the web (www) which
creates two types of messages, that are
transmitted over the web using TCP ;
– Request : This message contain information about the
page the user has requests. It is sent from the
user/client to the web server.
– Response : This message contains information that
allows the user/client to view the web page they
requested. The web page is contained in this message.
The versions of HTTP
HTTP 1.0: RFC 1945
HTTP 1.1: RFC 2068
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 HTTP overview
Uses TCP: PC running
Explorer
• client initiates TCP connection

HT
(creates socket) to server,

TP
HT

re
port 80

TP

qu
r

es
es
• server accepts TCP connection

t
p
on
from client Server

se
running
• HTTP messages (application- Apache
Web
layer protocol messages)

t
server

ues
exchanged between browser

onse
req
(HTTP client) and Web server

TP

resp
HT
(HTTP server)

HTTP
• TCP connection closed
Mac running 19
Navigator
 Web and HTTP
First some jargon
• HTTP is “stateless”
– server maintains no information about past client requests
– This allows the server to talk to many computers at the same
time with limited delays.
• Web page consists of objects
• Object can be HTML file, JPEG image, Java applet, audio
file,…
• Web page consists of base HTML-file which includes
several referenced objects
• Each object is addressable by a URL
• Example URL:
www.someschool.edu/someDept/pic.gif

host name path name

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HTTP 1.0: RFC 1945
Non-persistent HTTP
• At most one object is sent over a
TCP connection.
• HTTP/1.0 uses non-persistent HTTP
• Method Types
Method types put different
– GET information in the response
– POST message.

– HEAD We will cover the meanings of

these methods later.

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 HTTP 1.1: RFC 2068
Persistent HTTP
• Multiple objects can be sent over single TCP
connection between client and server.
• HTTP/1.1 uses persistent connections in
default mode
• Method Types
– GET, POST, HEAD, same as HTTP 1.0
– PUT
– DELETE

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 An Example of
Nonpersistent HTTP
Suppose user enters URL
www.someSchool.edu/someDepartment/home.index

This URL contains text and references to 10

jpeg images.
Therefore there is 11 objects that must be sent
to the user.
An example of the steps that are taken are on
the next 2 slides.

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 1a. HTTP client initiates TCP
connection to HTTP server
(process) at
www.someSchool.edu on port 80
1b. HTTP server at host
www.someSchool.edu
waiting for TCP
connection at port 80.
“accepts” connection,
notifying client
2. HTTP client sends HTTP
request message (containing
URL) into TCP connection 3. HTTP server receives
socket. Message indicates that request message, forms
client wants object response message
someDepartment/home.index containing requested
object, and sends
time message into its socket

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Nonpersistent HTTP (cont.)
4. HTTP client receives
response message
containing html file,
displays html. Parsing html 5. HTTP server closes TCP
file, finds 10 referenced connection.
jpeg objects

time
6. Steps 1-5 repeated for
each of 10 jpeg objects

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 HTTP Request/Response Message
Line
• Both messages are broken up into three
sections;
– Request/response line.
• Contains for a Request:
– Method, eg: GET, POST
– URL of the file that the client requesting.
– The version number of the http.
• Contains for a Response
– HTTP version
– HTTP request code

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HTTP Request/Response Message
Header
– HTTP header.
• Contains info that falls into three types
– General : contains info about client/server.
– Entity: contains info about the data being sent
between client and server.
– Request: contains info about the client configuration
& different types of acceptable documents.
OR
– Response: contains info about the server sending the
response and how it can deal with the response.

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HTTP Request/Response Message
Body
– HTTP body.
• Contains for a Request:
– If the method is post, then the body contains any
data that is being sent to the server. Eg: data
from a form.
– If the method is GET then the body is empty
• Contains for a Response:
– If the request is successful, then the body
contains the HTML code & script, ready for the
browser’s interpretation

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GET message
HTTP Request Request
line

Request: GET/default.asp
/HTTP://www.Wrox.com
/HTTP1.1
Header: Header
ACCEPT:*/*
ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: en-us
CONNECTION:Keep-Alive
Client form data
HOST:webdev.wrox.co.uk
REFERER:http://webdev.wrox.co.uk/books/SampleList.asp?bookcode=3382
USER_AGENT:Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;MSIE 5.01;Windows NT 5.0)
Body
Body;(empty)

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 get request
• Sends form content as part of URL
• Retrieves appropriate resource from Web server
• Limits query to 1024 characters
• The ? The start of the query string and is used to
separate each Key-value pair.
• The key-value pair consists of the variable name and the
value of the variable.
• In the example below the variable name is called name
and the value is 2.
Query String

Key-value pair
URL 30
 post request
• Updates contents of Web
server (posting new messages
to forum)
• Unlike the get has no limit for
length of query
• Not part of URL and cannot be
seen by user

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 Accessing Web Servers
• Requesting documents
– You must know the machine name on which the
Web server resides. This can be done by the
following;
1. Through local Web servers
Or
remote Web servers
OR
2. Through domain name or Internet Protocol (IP)
address

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 Local Web server
• Resides on users’ machines
• Requests documents in two ways
– Machine name
– localhost
• Host name that references local machine
• Does not strictly belong to hierarchy
• Each ISP (residential ISP, company, university) has
one.
– Also called “default name server”
• When a host makes a DNS query, query is sent to its
local DNS server
– Acts as a proxy, forwards query into hierarchy.

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 Domain name
• Represents a group of hosts on Internet
• Combines with show name (www) and top-level
domain to form a fully qualified host name
• Top-level domain (TLD)
– Describes type of organization that owns domain name
and its’ country of origin.
• .com or .org or .net.au
• Fully qualified host name
– Provides user friendly way to identify site on Internet
Root DNS Servers

com DNS servers org DNS servers edu DNS servers

yahoo.com amazon.com pbs.org poly.edu umass.edu

DNS servers DNS servers DNS servers DNS servers
DNS servers
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SOAP
SOAP

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 What is SOAP?
• SOAP provides the envelope for sending Web
Services messages over the
Internet/Internet. 
• SOAP at one time stood for Simple Object
Access Protocol. Starting with SOAP Version
1.2, the letters in the acronym have no
particular meaning.
• SOAP commonly uses HTTP, but other
protocols such as Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol (SMTP) may by used.
• SOAP can be used to exchange complete
documents or to call a remote procedure.
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What is SOAP?
• The envelope contains two
parts:
• An optional header
providing information on
authentication, encoding of
data, or how a recipient of
a SOAP message should
process the message.
• The body that contains the
message. These messages
can be defined using the
WSDL specification.

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 What is SOAP?
• A SOAP envelope can contain any
XML data, just as an HTTP envelope
can contain any data in its entity-
body.
• In every existing SOAP envelope
contains a description of an RPC call
in a format similar to that of XML-
RPC.

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 Message Service
Specification (MSS)
The MSS contains two parts:
Header container. This is the first MIME
part, containing One SOAP message.
The SOAP message is an XML document
consisting of a SOAP Envelope element.
The SOAP Envelope element consists of:
SOAP-ENV:Header. This is a generic
mechanism for adding features to SOAP
message, including ebXML specific
header elements.
SOAP-ENV:Body. This is a container for
message service handler control data
and information related to the payload
parts of the message. 
Payload containers. There can be zero or
more additional MIME parts containing
application specific payloads.
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 Advantages of SOAP
• Using SOAP over HTTP allows for easier
communication behind proxies and
firewalls than previous remote execution
technology.
• SOAP is versatile enough to allow for
the use of different transport protocols.
The standard stacks use HTTP as a
transport protocol, but other protocols
are also usable (TCP, SNMP).

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 Disadvantages of SOAP
• Because of the verbose XML format, SOAP can be
considerably slower than competing middleware
technologies such as CORBA. This may not be an issue
when only small messages are sent.
• On the other side, SOAP has Message Transmission
Optimization Mechanism.
• When relying on HTTP as a transport protocol and not
using WS-Addressing or an ESB, the roles of the
interacting parties are fixed. Only one party (the
client) can use the services of the other. So
developers must use polling instead of notification in
these common cases.

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 Some Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http
http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/node33.html
http://www.15seconds.com/issue/031209.htm
http://www.w3schools.com/Schema/default.asp

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