Web Services (SOA)

Maybe you've heard, but web services are now a permanant fixture on the programming landscape. In theory SOA is supposed to allow for a platform independent catalog of services that can be utilized in a distributed fashion. In practice implemented SOA can add complexity and diminish your return if planning and execution fall short.

CF Webtools has been working with web services before that phrase became a part of the lexicon of tech speak. As early as 1998 we were using XML as a transport for real time stock quotes, commodities, and news. Some Examples of APIs we have worked with:

• Stock Quotes
Commodity quotesFOS - flight data for air traffic schedules
• E-commerce - Automatic reoccuring billing (ARB), token based transactions, Verisign, Authorize.net, Paypal, Google checkout etc.
• Amazon Merchant services - ordering, consuming the AMZ feed, searching etc.
• Star Topology - Using a distributed system of independent systems historical inventory data is shuttled forward to a master DB using interlocking web services.

There are many other examples - google maps and google earth, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook etc. It is nearly impossible to do anything approaching "web 2.0" (the latest buzz word for "what's happening on the web") without extensive use of Web services.

We have a great deal of experience not just using APIs and interfacing with them, but actually creating apis. We have created full APIs with documentation for customers who need to expose some level of functionality to an external vendor or partner (or even commercial subscription customer).