Abstract: Service-oriented computing (SOC) has emerged as an vital computing model and changed the way of designing, delivered and consuming of software. In SOC, services are used as fundamental elements to support fast, low-cost development of distributed applications in heterogeneous environments. Web services technology is the most capable choice to implement service oriented architecture and its strategic objectives, it can provide a flexible solution to the problem. With the help of WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI, Web services are becoming popular in Web applications In this paper, a survey on web services has been done.

Keywords: Web servies, atomic, composite web services, web service model, deveoplment life cycle.