Web services
A web service is a means for communicating between two applications over the web. With Genero Studio, you can create a SOAP or RESTful web service client or web service server.
The Genero Studio wizards largely develop SOAP web services, however you can create both SOAP and RESTful web services by hand-coding your web service application. For information about coding Genero web service applications, see the Web Services section of the Genero Business Development Language User Guide.
Consumers and Producers (Clients and Servers)
A web service application with either act as a consumer or a producer. A consumer is a client who consumes a web service, A producer is the web server application that produces something for the consumer client. The consumer is often referred to as the client, which the producer is referred to as the server.
SOAP and RESTful web services
Web services are of two kinds: Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) or Representational State Transfer (REST).
SOAP defines a standard communication protocol specification for XML-based message exchange. The Web Services Description Langauge (WSDL) describes a common set of rules to define the messages, bindings, operations and location of the service.
REST describes a set of architectural principles by which data can be transmitted over a standardized interface (such as HTTP). While accessing RESTful resources with HTTP protocol, the URL of the resource serves as the resource identifier and GET, PUT, DELETE, POST and HEAD are the standard HTTP operations to be performed on that resource. RESTful web services are stateless. Producers and consumers must understand the context and content being passed along, as there is not standard set of rules to describe the REST web service interface.