Web Services & XML-Based Data Exchange Model

Data are the backbone to any organization. In some organizations there are applications that operate on a distributed platform. These applications might often communicate with applications on a different platform, that structures data in a different format. The manner in which data is transferred between such applications can become complex, because there will be many platform dependent applications that need to process the data transferred.Over the past few years many technologies have been used for this, such as Microsoft's Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM)[1) and Sun's Remote Machine Integration (RMI)f2J, but none of them was particularly easy to implement, and they did not address the needs of disparate systems using different operating system, language and architectures Hence a mechanism for exchange of data in a simple, effective manner for such applications is a basic necessity.Such a mechanism to deal with data exchange in a platform independent manner is discussed. The proposed model is WebService and XML, and data between the applications is exchanged in the form of XML documents. XML is text-based and can be processed by any application existing on any platform. Web Services are designed to enable disparate systems the ability to communicate and exchange data with one another, regardless of their operating system, language, or architecture.