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

'Web Service' is composed of two words,'Web' and 'Service'.
What is 'Web'? 'Web' means 'World Wide Web'.
'Service' for what? Not for Human,if so,it's 'Web Page',such as text,images,video etc.
It's for Programs to communicate through the Internet using the same technology the 'Web' used,such as TCP,HTTP etc.
'Service' also means it provides some functions,like the 'Service Layer' in CRUD. There are mainly two types:
1. SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol)
2. RESTful(Representational state transfer)