Hugh Winkler holding forth on computing and the Web

Friday, March 25, 2005

Good web services make webapps programmable

Just as exposing COM automation interfaces on desktop applications made Excel and Visio more powerful by enabling people to write a Visual Basic script to build composite applications from the two, exposing your webapp as a web service enables people to integrate your webapp with others.

Recipe for a good web service: Start with a good webapp like Amazon or Google or Travelocity. Expose the functionality in the webapp as POSTing and GETing self descriptive messages. That's about it. Now anyone can script your application and coordinate reserving an airline ticket with ordering a book.

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