Basics : Web Services

Web Service simply means a service available over a network (internet) typically delivered over HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). Web Service is the basic building block for integrations in cloud based ERPs like Workday or Salesforce. You either want to get information out of the system or put into the system, webservices are used. Workday provides many SOAP based web services put into various categories like Human Resources, Payroll, Staffing etc. It also provides a handful od REST based web services. These webservices are coded and maintained by workday and the full documentation is found on the workday community (https://community.workday.com/api)

Below are some of the characteristic features of a web service:

* Is available over the internet/Private network

* Uses Standard XML messaging

* Not tied to any specific platform or programming language

* Self describing via XML grammar

* Is discoverable via simple find mechanism

If you ask me why Web Services? I'll try to be crisp with this:

* Expose existing function on to the network

* Interoperability

* Standardized Protocol

* Low Cost of Comminication

Wondering what is all this SOAP, REST, Web Service, HTTP ?????

Enough of all high level words, let us talk in a language that all of us can understand :)

Consider a leagacy recruting system where you hire candidates and you wish to interface it to Workday HCM using web services. The legacy recruting system is suppose built with visual basic and doesn't know how to interect with your new HR system. Now you pass on the workday web service to the recruting system which basically is a XML document that can be communicated over HTTP. 

* The recruting system bundles all the required information of the new hire into a SOAP message  

* The SOAP message is sent to the web service (Workday API) as a body of HTTP request

* The web service unpacks and converts it into a command that is understood and processed by workday. A response message is also generated with details od the new hire.

* The web service packages the response into another SOAP message which is sent back to the recruting system as a response to the HTTP request

I wish this post was helpful. Feel free to drop your valuable comments below.  I will come up with more content soon. Untill then Cheers and Good Bye.