# Web Services

This section describes how to configure and deploy web services. Web services are software components that are made available over the Internet using Web technologies and a standardized XML-based messaging system. Web services are designed to be accessed by other applications and vary in complexity from simple operations such as checking a bank account balance online to complex systems for customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and so on. Since they are based on open standards such as HTTP and XML-based protocols including SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI, Web services are hardware, programming language, and operating system independent. This means that applications written in different programming languages and running on different platforms can seamlessly exchange data using Web services.

The Application Server provides support to manage deployed web services through the Administration Console as well as the Command-line interface. Similar to EJBs and Servlets, all the deployed web services in a domain are displayed in the Administration Console. The infrastructure to administer the web services through Administration Console is provided by AMX MBean.

The following procedures show how to manage Web services that are packaged either as `*.ear` files or as `*.war` files. For additional information about Web services, see Chapter 12, "Managing Web Services," in Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 9 Administration Guide.

- Administering Registries

- Managing Deployed Web Services

- Monitoring Web Services

- Using XSL Transformation Rules