Web services
A Web service is a means for communication between two applications over the Web. With Genero Studio, you can create a SOAP or REST Web service or Web service client.
Genero Studio provides some tools to aide in the development of SOAP and REST Web services; however, you can also create SOAP and REST Web services by hand-coding a Web service application. For information about coding Genero Web service applications, see the Web Services section of the Genero Business Development Language User Guide.
Consumer and producer (client and server)
A Web service application acts as either a consumer or a producer. A consumer is a client that consumes a Web service. A producer is the Web service that produces something for the consumer. The consumer is often referred to as the client, with the producer referred to as the server.
SOAP and REST
Genero supports two types of Web services: 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 Language (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 standard HTTP operations (GET, PUT, and so on) define the action to perform on that resource. RESTful Web services are stateless. Producers and consumers must understand the context and content being passed along, because no standard set of rules describes the REST Web service interface.