SOAP xml web services are a relatively new technology which enables computers to provide functionality to one-another over a network, using the standard Internet techniques and protocols that are normally used for serving web-pages. The call/response data is passed back and forth encoded as xml using the SOAP protocol (see the following page ).

Using these techniques, computers can provide a range of electronic services to other computers, which may be co-located, and on the same local network, or at a remote location and connected by the Internet. Such services will be a key part of the next phase of evolution of the Internet, grid computing, and the related family of technologies.

The term web-service is sometimes used generically to mean other types of networked service (usually provided by a web-server), such as the provision of a stream of xml in response to an AJAX request from a web-browser. However, in the present context, when we refer to 'web-services', we mean SOAP-encoded xml web-services.

Our XML Web Services

We provide a number of xml web-services, which perform a range of functions. These services can be called by software 'clients' as diverse as a command-line script, an MS office desktop application, or a large application environment.

Some of these services are, stand-alone and can be called independently of any applications; others are application-bound and provide interface-channels into higher-level applications.

The services which are available can be seen using our Web-Service Explorer tool.
Standard WSDL service descriptors are available for our web services.