Editing Web service (section)

==Web services (generic)==
===Asynchronous JavaScript and XML===
{{Main Article | Ajax (programming)}}

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) is a dominant technology for Web services. Developing from the combination of HTTP servers, JavaScript clients and [[Plain Old XML]] (as distinct from [[SOAP]] and W3C Web Services), now it is frequently used with [[JSON Web Token|JSON]] as well as, or instead of, XML.

===REST===
{{Main Article | REST}}
Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architecture for well-behaved Web services that can function at Internet scale.

In a 2004 document, the W3C sets following REST as a key distinguishing feature of Web services:
{{Quote | text = We can identify two major classes of Web services:
*[[REST]]-compliant Web services, in which the primary purpose of the service is to manipulate XML representations of [[Web resource]]<nowiki>s</nowiki> using a uniform set of [[Stateless protocol|stateless]] operations; and
*arbitrary Web services, in which the service may expose an arbitrary set of operations. | author = W3C | source = Web Services Architecture<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.w3.org/TR/2004/NOTE-ws-arch-20040211/#relwwwrest |title=Web Services Architecture § Relationship to the World Wide Web and REST Architectures |website=[[World Wide Web Consortium|W3C]] |access-date=11 November 2017}}</ref>|title=}}

===Technologies and protocols related to web services using markup languages===
There are a number of Web services that use markup languages:
* [[JSON-RPC]].
* [[JSON-WSP]]
* [[Representational state transfer]] (REST) versus [[remote procedure call]] (RPC)
* [[Simple Object Access Protocol]]
* [[Web Services Conversation Language]] (WSCL)
* [[Web Services Description Language]] (WSDL), developed by the [[World Wide Web Consortium|W3C]]
* [[Web Services Flow Language]] (WSFL), superseded by [[Business Process Execution Language|BPEL]]
* [[Web template]]
* [[WS-MetadataExchange]]
* [[XML Interface for Network Services]] (XINS), provides a [[Plain Old XML|POX]]-style web service specification format

===Web API===
{{Main Article| Web API}}
A [[Web API]] is a development in Web services where emphasis has been moving to simpler [[representational state transfer]] (REST) based communications.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Benslimane |first1=D. |last2=Dustdar |first2=S. |last3=Sheth |first3=A. |author3-link=Amit Sheth |year=2008 |title=Services Mashups: The New Generation of Web Applications |url=https://works.bepress.com/amit_sheth/292/download/ |journal=[[IEEE Internet Computing]] |language=en-US |volume=10 |issue=5 |pages=13–15 |doi=10.1109/MIC.2008.110 |s2cid=8124905|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Restful APIs do not require XML-based Web service protocols ([[SOAP]] and WSDL) to support their interfaces.