The creation and popularity of Web Services are growing rapidly in every industry. With this continued growth, more and more programmers find themselves writing code that, even if it's not currently packaged as a Web Service, will eventually be exposed as one.
As more enterprises move toward an e-business strategy, communication and integration of existing information systems is key. When integrating existing information systems with Web Services, enterprises will usually face one of the following two scenarios:
- The enterprise information system is comprised of legacy systems. To offer services and share data with business partners, customers, and other information systems, businesses must update these legacy systems with current technology and expose them as Web Services.
- The enterprise information system may have middleware already in place, but this middleware needs to be exposed as Web Services.
