By now, you have heard enough about Web services to understand the basic technology premise. If not, refer to this issue’s first article for a good springboard. But why expose your company’s data to the outside world? The key corporate advantage of Web services is the ability to extend the access and use of your data while still maintaining a direct sense of ownership. In effect, you permit an outside party to leverage the information you expose using a model that provides benefit to both parties. An example of an implementer is Amazon.com. This internet B2B pioneer is once again leading the technology charge; this time in the area of Web services.

Amazon has made available, free of charge, a developer’s toolkit that provides access to the underlying data that drives its internet site (e.g. titles, prices, reviews, etc.) as well as core functionality. Users have the ability to execute searches, order items, check order status and perform the majority of the actions available at www.amazon.com. All of this is done using standard Web services.

How does it work? Amazon has provided full documentation on how to access and retrieve information it has made available through its Web service. When you register to use the service you are given a unique identification number. This tells Amazon that the request comes from you. All subsequent queries (via HTTP or SOAP) contain this identifier and the parameters for the requested action. As an example, the URL below would be a request for bestselling books on dogs: