Appendix B. Glossary

Table of Contents

Glossary

This is the glossary of this documentation. Words important for understanding the principles of this software are described here.

Glossary

H

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

HTTP is a client-server protocol by which two machines can communicate over a tcp/ip connection. An HTTP server is a program that sits listening on a machine's port for HTTP requests. An HTTP client (we will be using the terms HTTP client and web client interchangeably) opens a tcp/ip connection to the server via a socket, transmits a request for a document, then waits for a reply from the server. Once the request-reply sequence is completed, the socket is closed. So the HTTP protocol is a transactional one. The lifetime of a connection corresponds to a single request-reply sequence. (a transaction)

HTTP is the protocol used for document exchange in the World-Wide-Web. Everything that happens on the web, happens over HTTP transactions. TCP/IP networking and HTTP are the two essential components that make the web work. In order to write software that accesses the web (like a web browser, or a custom web client) you need a basic understanding of both.

W

Webservices

Webservices is a set of software interfaces to make programms accessible by excanging XML data via HTTP.

	The same way programmatic interfaces have been been available since the early days of the World Wide Web via HTML forms, programs are now accessible by exchanging XML data through an interface, e.g. by using SOAP Version 1.2, the XML-based protocol produced by the XML Protocol Working Group.
-- W3C Web Services Architecture Working Group

More information according to Webservices can be found at the W3C Webservices Activity Statement.