Web services have become increasingly important on the Internet to connect one site to another and share data between applications. Web services come in many different forms and are typically designed for a specific purpose. One common web service is RSS syndication. Many web sites and blogs will distribute their content through the RSS XML standard so that people can read many sites from a centralized application, such as Google Reader.
Monarch has developed several web services for our clients. The Mercedes-Benz Club of America regularly holds various driving events that require a unique online registration procedure. The MBCA worked with Motorsports Reg to provide that specialized registration processing, but Motorsports Reg needed to determine if a registrant is an active MBCA member to correctly price the registration.
Motorsports Reg uses a secure web service written by Monarch to query the MBCA member database, feeding back only the non-identifying information required by Motorsports Reg.
The web service is called using REST and an authentication token over https and XML data is returned.