What is a Web Service?. Is it a program/process that is accessed over the internet
via http using :
-SOAP
-WSDL
-UUDI
-XML

This is what my intuition is telling me. This is my definition, although I could
be wrong. Being familiar with RPC on Unix systems,
a Service is accessed by a server.



What I am very frustrated about is that I have a book on Web Services and they seem
to be dancing around a concrete definition of what a web service is. They are throwing
out information on SOAP, WSDL, UUDI and XML and seem to imply that all of these combined
make up a web service. Is this true? Please save me from this rhetoric. Their definition
of a Web service is as follows, but I like mine better.


Web Services are extensible Markup language (XML) Applications
mapped to programs, objects or databases or to comprehensive
business functions.