ON THE USE OF WEB SERVICES TECHNOLOGY IN E-HEALTH APPLICATIONS

This work takes a study on the Web Services—a technology that has come to change the future of Computing and e-commerce. Web Services is a distributed computing technology that offers interaction and collaboration among vendors and customers, with the vision of providing ubiquitous computing. When you plug an appliance into the electricity socket, you don't worry about how the electricity generation and distribution takes place. All that is expected is uninterrupted power and the utility bill that you get at the end of the month! Similarly, Web Services will make computing resources, both hardware and software, accessible through the Internet just like electricity is made available. Web Services will do for computing what the Internet did for data. They would encourage a pay-per-usage model and make dynamic collaborations possible. One of the key definitions of Web Services is: "Web Services are loosely coupled software components delivered over Internet-standard technologies.” This paper considers the importance of web service as well as the success and the advantages of web service over the early technologies like: EDI, CORBA, and COM. Distinction is made between Web Service and Service. The components technologies of Web Service such as the WSDL, XML, UDDI, and, SOAP and how they apply to e-health applications, were examined. The creation of Web Service using the ASP.NET, Apache axis and Java2 Platform among other issues were also considered. We present a model for web services enabled infrastructure which is a framework for our e-health project at our research centre. In effect this paper will create a good knowledge for those new to web services as well as make more enlightenment to those already acquainted with the technology especially those developing applications for e-health services.