Date: May. 26, 2001
Link: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/w-ovr/?dwzone=components
Source Author or Organization: IBM Web Services Architecture Team

This article provides an overview of the IBM Web Services architecture. An IBM Web Service is described by two documents: a Network Accessible Service Specification Language (NASSL) document (derived from XML-based Web Interface Definition Language, or WIDL) and a Well-Defined Service (WDS) document. The NASSL document contains operational information, such as access protocol and endpoints, and the WDS document is a supplement with non-operational information such as company and service descriptions.

The article characterizes Web services as the next step in the evolution of e-business. The three primary operator roles are service providers, service requesters, and service brokers, who "publish, find, and bind." The primary benefits of architecture use are: increasing operability by lowering the bar for shared understanding, reducing complexity via encapsulation, enabling just-in-time integration, and increasing interoperability for legacy applications.

Links to related resources are provided, including IBM's Web Services Toolkit and the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration Service (UDDI) project.