WS-I (Web Services Interoperability Organization)

 A consortium founded by Microsoft, IBM, BEA Systems and Intel that is dedicated to the development of Web services. Its goals are to provide guidance and education, to promote interoperability and to ensure that Web services evolve and become widely used. Additional information can be found at www.ws-i.org.

Web Service

(Not to be confused with Web Services)

 A software application whose interfaces and binding are capable of being defined, described, and discovered through industry-standard XML protocols, such as SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI.

UML (Unified Modeling Language)

Developed by the Object Management Group, UML is a visual language for specifying and documenting models of software systems, including their strucuture and design. UML is supported by many development tools.   

Model Driven Architecture

 An approach to system specification, portability, and interoperability based on the use of formal and semi-formal models. The MDA derives all executable code from models of the system using UML and other associated OMG (Object Management Group) standards

Component-Based Development

 An approach to the design and implementation of software applications where systems are assembled using components from one or more sources. The components may be written in different programming languages and run on different platforms. Components exist at different levels of granularity - from a re-usable calendar gadget to fully featured CRM (Customer Relationship Management)) module. What is common is their ability to be composable. A software component is any self-contained, independently viable, and deployable grouping of services whose services can be involked by many different types of clients.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language)

  The data tagging language of web services. XML is not so much a language as a standardized set of rules for adding structure to any form of data using a system of markup tags. Anyone can create their own markup vocabulary (called an XML Schema), and XML ensures that the structure will be intelligible to anyone else who consults the XML Schema document. More importantly, referring to an XML Schema enables XML-aware software to automatically manipulate the data without needing advance knowledge of the structure.

WSDL (Web Services Description Language)

The standard format for describing a web service. Expressed in XML, a WSDL definition describes how to access a web service and what operations it will perform. Usually pronounced "whizz-dul" (to rhyme with 'whistle'), WSDL is seen (with SOAP and UDDI) as one of the three foundation standards of web services.

Web services

 Automated resources accessed via the Internet. Web services are software-powered resources or functional components whose capabilities can be accessed at an internet URI. Standards-based web services use XML to interact with each other, which allows them to link up on demand using loose coupling. 

URI (Uniform Resource Identifier)

The address of an Internet resource. A URI is the unique name used to access the resource. It is not necessarily a specific file location (it may be a call to an application or a database, for example), which is why it is preferred over the similar acronym URL (Uniform Resource Locator).