Web service benefits

In general terms, web services provide several key benefits for software developers:

1. Based on industry standards

Once a software developer learns how to use a web service, the learning curve is greatly reduced for other web services that follows the standards.

2. Development tool independence

Any development tool that supports the web service standard should be able to access the data and services provided by the web service.

3. Insulation from future changes

Web services attempt to keep the web service interface unchanged, even though the data and code behind the web service may change in future versions of a product. This helps applications that use the web service to continue working properly, even though the application behind the web service has changed.

4. Secure access to data.

Web services can tightly control access to the data and services they make available to other applications.