This document defines the Web Services Architecture. It identifies the functional components and defines the relationships among those components to effect the desired properties of the overall architecture.
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Web services provide a standard means of interoperating between different software applications, running on a variety of platforms and/or frameworks. This document (WSA) is intended to provide a common definition of a Web service, and define its place within a larger Web services framework to guide the community. The WSA provides a conceptual model and a context for understanding Web services and the relationships between the components of this model.
The architecture does not attempt to specify how Web services are implemented, and imposes no restriction on how Web services might be combined. The WSA describes both the minimal characteristics that are common to all Web services, and a number of characteristics that are needed by many, but not all, Web services.
The Web services architecture is an interoperability architecture: it identifies those global elements of the global Web services network that are required in order to ensure interoperability between Web services.