A Web Services Taxonomy: not all about the data
29 May 2009
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A Web Services Taxonomy (PDF 84k)] A Web Service, according to a standard definition, is
"a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network."
1
To put it another way, a Web Service is some useful service offered (usually) on the Internet, designed as a sort of
building block
you can use any way you want. So, for example,
Google Maps, a free service that dynamically draws maps of any location and locates addresses, has been used by thousands of people to build new services such as crime-report maps and real-estate listing tools, Another way to wrap your mind around Web Services is to
consider a range of well-known ones and what they do. That's what the chart below does, with services such as Paypal, Google, Twitter, and Sabre, the airline-reservations system. (click on chart to see full-size):
This chart represents a taxonomy, or classification, of Web Services, constructed by characterizing all services according to two factors:

- Data quality: from simple/commodity to complex/unique
- Transaction level: from basic lookup to real-world transaction.