<title>Web services for the Virtual Observatory</title>

Abstract

Web Services form a new, emerging paradigm to handle distributed access to\nresources over the Internet. There are platform independent standards (SOAP,\nWSDL), which make the developers? task considerably easier. This article\ndiscusses how web services could be used in the context of the Virtual\nObservatory. We envisage a multi-layer architecture, with interoperating\nservices. A well-designed lower layer consisting of simple, standard services\nimplemented by most data providers will go a long way towards establishing a\nmodular architecture. More complex applications can be built upon this core\nlayer. We present two prototype applications, the SdssCutout and the SkyQuery\nas examples of this layered architecture.\n