What is a “web service” in plain English?

Question

I\'ve been reading about \"web services\" here on SO, on Wikipedia, Google, etc., and I don\'t quite understand what they are. What is the plain English definition/descript

Answer 1

The best plain English explanation comes from using an analogy:

• Web pages allow people to communicate and collaborate with each other.
• Web services allow programs to communicate and collaborate with each other.

Your PHP example is a web service by that definition, because the output could be consumed by another program. But in reality, HTML screen-scraping is not a reliable or maintainable way of producing web services.