Hi,having just started studying web engineering, I received an assignment which wants me to create a mysql database, a php website, a php webservice that reads the mysql database and a Visual C# portal which consumes the web service. I've managed to do most of the stuff except the web service related part. I've read around and there seems to be some relation with Soap, XML RPC and PEAR however I have no idea what to do and I'm runing out of time to submit my work. Can anyone please send me an explanation of the work to do. I need to start from the really basic stuff including what PEAR is about and if I need to install it first. Thanks.

Ah, last minute request, huh? Well, in terms of what web services are, it is a language independent way of exchanging information over the web. It is implemented in XML...RMI and Messaging are two ways of accessing the information. Basically, SOAP is an "envelope" for transferring information between client/server applications, WSDL provides the defintion of SOAP envelopes and functions...UDDI is a registry for looking up web services like the yellow pages of web services. The .NET framework is based on web services as well... Two examples of web services are google and amazon. Google offers a web service to search, spellcheck, etc....Amazon offers a web service to search and purchase books (the benefit being that the user of the web service gets a small percentage of the profit of the sale...while amazon provides a reseller channel). I'd suggest checking both of these web services out to get an idea... for google: http://www.google.com/apis/ for amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/002-5641862-5352845?node=3435361 I'd recommend googling for tutorials on implementing SOAP...some key words...soap, wsdl, uddi, web services, nusoap, pear...you get the picture. I'm no expert in web services and this is a "best effort". If I missed anything, please correct... Good luck!