Difference between web services and web applicatio

Question

Lets have an example scenario:

Client opens a web site and finds the sum of two numbers which he enters from the textboxes.Then clicks on the ADD button.Two parameters are HTTP GET'ed to server where PHP code is written to add the numbers and result is echo'ed.

Based on this scenario could anybody explain the difference between Web services and application?

Answer 1

The main difference between a web service and a web application is, that a web application is typically intended for human-to-computer interaction, whereas web services are typically intended for computer-to-computer interaction.

A web application can contain both a graphical user interface for human users, as well as a set of web services for computer "users" (clients). For instance, a payment service like Paypal has both a graphical user interface for human users, as well as a set of web services through which you can have your own backend systems access the Paypal services.

This illustration shows a web application that contains both a graphical user interface, and a web service interface (a set of web services exposing selected functions of the web application):

Answer 2

To add 2 no.s we write a web service, to subtract we write a diffrent web service, however calculator is an web application that uses add,subtract and many other webservices in combine.

Answer 3

A person drives a car. That car could be powered by an internal combustion engine, electric motor, or nuclear reactor. The power source doesn't matter to the driver though, as all they need to see are the controls and the road ahead.

The application is the car. Web services are the nuclear reactor.

Answer 4

Web service is for application consumption , invoked through web application To communicate with webservice data should be sent as SOAP message or as REST i.e XML over HTTP

Most of the times web service is not part of application because to facilitate the use by other web applications and it is not for direct consumption to end users

Web application is for human consumption invoked directly by GUI which may or may not use web service for giving response

Answer 5

A webservice is equivalent to a method in java that has a web wrapper around it. It lives on the server and it can be sent data / queried etc. and may or may not return a result. It does not have any front end it can only be accessed via http get, put, delete etc.

A web Application is a fully functional piece of software that lives on a sever that is designed to help people achieve a task. This would have a front end that would allow users to interact with it / enter data etc.

A web application could use multiple webservices to achieve its goal / end result

Answer 6

There is little difference between web application and web services. Web Application: In web application when user request any data then the server embeds the response into some HTML and forward it to the user and on browser the HTML is rendered. While in web services it's done differently that when some user requests for some data then the server returns it a json or XML array of objects and the data can be displayed by anyway the web designers wants.
Thanks Hope it resolves the matter.