apHarmony offers web service programming and development.  Whether you are looking to create a publicly available web service, develop an authenticated extension to an existing system, or create an internal web service for line-of-business applications, we will be happy to bring our software development team to your project.  Please feel free to give us a call at 630-855-7522 for a free evaluation and quote.

A variety of technologies exist to help facilitate web services.  The most popular discovery protocol is the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).  A SOAP interface describe the functions and messages available within the web service, and how to access them.  The actual data transfer format in most web services is XML, however that is quickly changing to JSON – a more compact format.  JSON has much less tag overhead than its XML counterparts, and its JavaScript integration provides a convenient format for direct client-side access from HTML5 and modern web apps.

When developing a publicly available web service, the most important concern is maintaining the security of internal systems.  Since web services often provide value by enabling access to valuable data, they bridge the LAN and WAN, and are a potential point of system compromise.  In addition to extensive security and code review, it is usually beneficial to keep the application server in a DMZ or isolated network.  By isolating the web service host, even if the server is compromised through an operating system-level security vulnerability, the remainder of the network will not be affected.

Internal web services, on the other hand, often focus more on system integration and data formats.  While security is still important, a cohesive authentication mechanism is usually already available from the internal network.  Internal web services are often used to bridge disparate applications, or help provide data streams for big data analysis projects.

For a free evaluation and quote on a web service development project, please feel free to give us a call at 630-855-7522.