Google isn't the only one! Providing programmable web services is hot stuff on the net these days. Amazon.com is doing basically the same thing and you can get their toolkit at this link. To get an idea how hot, browse the UDDI site (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) maintained by Microsoft (or one of the other partners such as IBM and SAP).
Click Here to see an example of the Microsoft UDDI Business Registry. Click the "Back" button in your browser to return.
Not to be outdone, Microsoft also has (at this writing) at least three web services that you can program against. The one that is mainly intended for developers to use in learning about web services returns information about files that can be found at MSDN (the Microsoft Developer Network - surely one of the best things Microsoft ever dreamed up). The Microsoft web service is ...
- Significantly more difficult to even complete the sample programs compared to Google (What a Surprise!!)
- Involves several Microsoft downloads (Another Surprise!!)
- Also requires that you obtain a key to use. And a password. And a special security SOAP header that would involve even more difficulty to try to duplicate without proprietary Microsoft software (Yet Another Surprise!!)
You can get more information about the Microsoft Web Service at this link!
The other two are a web server interface to Microsoft's massive TerraServer database of satellite photographs and the MapPoint web service. Author Arron Skonnard has surveyed all three in this excellent MSDN article.
There's a whole subculture of people coding innovative new applications that run on the web and access each other for ever more interesting and creative ways to use information. It's almost like when the web itself was new. People didn't know exactly what it was good for, but people with vision knew it was going to be something really big.
