WebObjects is the easiest way to create powerful web services, providing streamlined application integration and interoperability.

You may already publish dynamic web pages based on databases and objects, perhaps an online catalog or a shipping tracking system. Internally, you might use this technology to unite functions from different company entities for display on a single page. For instance, an online paystub might display pay information from the payroll department, along with vacation hours stored in a separate database in Human Resources. You can already use WebObjects to create such smart web pages.

With WebObjects 5.3, you can also publish data as a web service so that custom clients can access the information without needing to know the internals of your application. For example, Dashboard in Mac OS X Tiger offers a custom view into information available on the web and takes advantage of web services for some of its functionality. AppleScript Studio and Automator offer the ability to create clients for Web services.

WebObjects 5.3 provides powerful tools that let you develop and deploy your own web services — without ever having to write a single line of low-level SOAP, XML or WSDL code. WebObjects uses Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) messages that wrap Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents, and sends the messages over TCP/IP using the HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP). This means you don’t need to invest in another server to take advantage of WebObjects web services, provided you already publish using a web server. To allow clients outside of your organization to access your web services, just publish their operations using Web Service Description Language (WSDL).

It’s also easy to configure and test web services without writing code. WebObjects 5.3 uses Axis — an implementation of SOAP from the Apache Software Foundation — as its SOAP engine, code generator and WSDL processing tool. WebObjects uses Axis to both deploy and consume Web services. In addition, WebObjects provides the innovative Web Services Assistant, a graphical interface for creating web services that access information in your current databases.

WebObjects services can interoperate with other services written in many languages, such as Java, AppleScript, Perl and .Net. You can even mix and match services written in different languages in a custom client. Script-level access to web services from languages such as AppleScript and Perl opens up enterprise application development to a new class of programmers.