Explain the concept of Web services in brief.

A Web service may be explained as an independent and self-sustained unit of a software application that is hosted on the Web and implement specific functionalities to implement the business logic. A Web service provides too much functionality, such as generating pay slips for employees, computing tax, broadcasting weather report, and giving updated news. The Web service permits application to share information or exchange data with other applications across dissimilar operating systems and hardware.

Thus, the work of a Web service is to unite software by exchanging data irrespective of their operating systems, supported hardware, and programming language used in their development. The Web services transfer data in the XML format and use Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to communicate. It is an XML based protocol. The Web services use Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) to explain itself.