Web Services

Webservices      

Web services enable the exchange data between different applications and different platforms. (Web services are web-based enterprise applications that use open, XMLbased standards and transport protocols to exchange data with calling clients) Web services can offer application-components like Currency conversion Weather reports Language translation as services

Weather Example   

Weather Example Send request with zip code as parameter Get response -- expected weather description

Why web service?  Web services are platform-independent and language-independent, and that is since the web services use standard XML languages.  Most Web services use HTTP for transmitting messages, this is a major advantage if you want to build an Internet-scale application. Disadvantages  Overhead- transmitting all the data in XML is obviously not as efficient as using a proprietary binary code.

WebServices Components WSDL – Web-services Description Language. SOAP – XML-based protocol to let applications exchange information. (Simple Object Access Protocol) UDDI – directory service where companies can register and search for Web services. (not commonly in used). (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) XML related – XML, XSD, XSLT.

Overview   

There are multiple policy aggregators and portals that are single stop shop for selling and servicing policies. Any insurance company has a business plan to partner with these policy aggregators to sell policies off the aggregator portals. For the same, a set of business services will need to be exposed for external systems to consume and vice versa.

Example An insurance company wish to expose these Web-Services to D2C channel, BPO Channel & Partner Portal for contact creation, getting premiums, creating proposals and issuing policies for each implemented product through intranet environment. The Architecture is given as follow:

The service Calls will be made from D2C, BPO, Patner portals: