The Web service protocol stack is the collection of computer networking protocols that are used to define, locate, implement, and make Web services interact with each other. The Web service protocol stack is mainly comprised of four areas:

• Service Transport: it is responsible for transporting messages between network applications and includes protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, FTP, as well as the more recent Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol (BEEP).
• XML Messaging: it is responsible for encoding messages in a common XML format so that messages can be understood at either end of the network connection. Currently, this area includes such protocols as XML-RPC, SOAP and REST.
• Service Description: it is used for describing the public interface to a specific web service. The WSDL interface format is typically used for this purpose.
• Service Discovery: it centralizes services into a common registry such that network web services can publish their location and description, and makes it easy to discover what services are available on the network. At present, the UDDI API is normally used for service discovery.

Web service protocol stack also includes a whole range of recently set up protocols: WSFL, Digital Signature.

External links

• Lawrence Wilkes (updated Feb 2005) The Web Services Protocol Stack
• Alex Nghiem (2003) The Basic Web Services Stack
• Ethan Cerami (2002) Top Ten FAQs for Web Services
• Pavel Kulchenko (2002) Web Services Acronyms, Demystified

Web services