WorkSpace is a service-oriented unified design and development environment that integrates the most important design and development tools in an easy-to-use open source framework. Enterprise modeling, database development, data federation, Web application development, service-oriented development, and orchestration all come together for a complete and flexible solution. This solution provides a single, consistent framework that facilitates the use of productivity features, graphical development styles, and automation to work through modeling, development, exploration, test, deployment, and debug cycles. All the key WorkSpace modules are demonstrated in Figure 1.

What Is a Web Service
A Web Service is a programmable component that provides a service and is accessible over the Internet. Web Services can be standalone or linked together to provide enhanced functionality. Buying airline tickets, accessing an online calendar, and obtaining tracking information for your overnight shipment are all business functions that have been exposed to the outside world as Web Services.

Web Services consist of methods that operate on messages containing either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information. An architecture that is based on Web Services is the logical evolution from a system of distributed object-oriented components to a network of services. Web Services provide a loosely coupled infrastructure that enables cross-enterprise integration.

Web Services differ from existing component object models and their associated object model-specific protocols, such as CORBA and IIOP, COM and DCOM, and Java and RMI, in that the distributed components are interfaced via non-object-specific protocols. Web Services can be written in any language and can be accessed using the familiar, firewall-friendly HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP).

As shown in Figure 2, Web Services consist of multiple layers that, when stacked together, form the basis for a standard mechanism for discovering, describing, and invoking the functionality provided by a standalone Web Service.