OpenTop Web Services
Web services is the generic name given to a class of
server-based applications which communicate using protocols defined
by the
World Wide Web consortium,
in particular HTTP and XML.
Although HTTP was originally designed to transport web pages,
its flexibility, ubiquity and stateless nature make it an ideal
protocol for transporting all kinds of digital information.
The flexibility of HTTP as a transport mechanism has been known for
some time, but it was not until the advent of XML, the so-called 'lingua franca'
of the internet, that the fundamentals were in place
to make possible a whole new class of simple and robust network applications.
Successful web services client applications need an entire stack of
building blocks, which consists of:-
- XML parsing and serialization
- Unicode encoding and decoding
- URL Parsing and navigation
- HTTP protocol handling
- HTTP session management
- Reliable and secure networking
OpenTop delivers all these necessary fundamental building blocks,
packaged in an elegant, fully-tested and supported, cross-platform library.
