What are Web Services?

What are web services?

Getting a bunch of computers to talk to each other used to be tougher than finding parking at a shopping mall the weekend before Christmas.

.NET web services fixes that. A distinctive arrangement of technologies, the .NET platform makes dispersed computing language autonomous, platform independent, and device independent. Considering that applications built and run on the .NET platform are available any time, any place, and on any device, that’s a pretty big deal. To keep it simple - .NET equals total connectivity. Web services can be used to include all kinds of remarkable functionalities in a new program without having to start from scratch, without needing to know anything about the business, or even the intricacy of the Web service he or she is using.

A web service is a remote procedure available to clients which allows different applications from different sources to communicate with each other without time-consuming custom coding. Web services are not tied to any one operating system or programming language, because all of the communication is in XML. Sometimes referred to as “application services,” web services share business logic, data and processes through a programmatic interface across a network. The applications interface, not the users.

SEKO's Web Services support applications and solutions designed for the smallest requests as well as the largest ones. Software developers who use SEKO's Web Services can:
• Take advantage of the resources that SEKO Worldwide provides to help software developers design and build world-class applications
• Submit Quote Requests for SEKO Rates
• Create Shipments from previous submitted quotes
• Create North American Shipments using SEKO's Shipment Factory platform
• Track Shipments via SEKO's Tracking Service

All details of the web service are hidden from the user, and the service is both hardware and software independent. This encourages software developers to build applications consisting of small, individual services, which can then be used alone or in groups to perform even more complex tasks.

Before you create your web service, you should define what it will do. This allows you to properly construct the interface that other applications must adhere to if they want to communicate with your web service. SEKO-IT will work directly with you and your IT team to establish and define these parameters, so as to ensure a shorter implementation time and seamless integration to your pre-existing systems.

Whether you require a web based inventory management solution to watch over your stock globally, a transportation management system to control your domestic distribution costs and automate your dispatches, a fully integrated ecommerce website or an online solution to manage your offshore vendors or real-time GPS tracking of a sensitive shipment, SEKO can provide everything through a single login to the MySEKO portal.