Machang... umbata web services kiyanne mokakda kiyala kohenda bung patan ganne....
Hari Ela... First of all I ll tel some thing about SOAP. ok ok got a way to tell...
Ryt....
SOAP - Simple Object access protocol.
As the name it self says machang, this provides a way to access objects.
This is a simple and more universal method. (Uses HTTP and XML)
ee kiyanne machang, umbata eka thanaka idala thawath thanaka thiyana object ekak invoke karanna puluwan through htt protocol
What SOAP does?
SOAP just sends and receive messages in a typical request / response cycle (I assume you know these stuff buddy)
SOAP DEFINES AN XML STRUCTURE TO CALL METHODS AND PASS METHOD PARAMETERS AND TO RETURN THE VALUE
This is a small example
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<soap:Body>
<getProductDetails xmlns="http://warehouse.example.com/ws">
<productID>827635</productID>
</getProductDetails>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
We can invoke this coding part when the user presses a button in the web interface machang.
Now in the above example the user has requested the product details of the product ID 827635. (just an xml structure)
As the response you will get some thing like :
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<soap:Body>
<getProductDetailsResponse xmlns="http://warehouse.example.com/ws">
<getProductDetailsResult>
<productName>Toptimate 3-Piece Set</productName>
<productID>827635</productID>
<description>3-Piece luggage set. Black Polyester.</description>
<price currency="NIS">96.50</price>
<inStock>true</inStock>
</getProductDetailsResult>
</getProductDetailsResponse>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
With all the details like description, price about the requested product.
Simple machang.... Thats it... So as you can see it uses xml to communicate between the systems which is really good because these days people use different platforms and different systems, versions, etc. That is the advantage of using SOAP.
Now lets see what are web services...
WEB SERVICE IS A SOFTWARE COMPONENT THAT :
supports interoperability between machines (PCs) over a network
receives and sends messages using SOAP which I discussed earlier
totally independent of the platform
There are 3 parts in a web service
Service Broker
Service requester
Service provider
Service broker:
Just like a directory service (Which we use to find tel. nos.)
Service providers can bublish their services and requesters can find a service
Service requester is the person who presses the button on the web interface in my earlier example.
Service providers are the person who has created the web service.
(Some common publishes : BEA web Logic, Cape Clear, HP, Oracle dynamic services, Sun. my services.ONE)
So we can wrap even the existing programs as web services and send them across the network as they are platform independent.
hari amaarui pictures nathuwa kiyanna machang.. This is the best I can explain it to you... Hope you got atleast a small idea by reading this machang...
And Coldfusion requires server side support r8?? Which is tiresome to implement than PHP i guess.. PHP free n easy 
