Remote Web services are a fascinating new way of allowing Website visitors to view content tailored to their needs. Using a few lines of code, a Web developer can query data from a remote server and publish the data in whatever format he needs. XMethods.net, one of the larger free Web services directories, has free code examples for a plethora of services including currency conversion, email validation, World Cup soccer tracking, anagrams and lotto number generators.

If you're looking for more commercial application of Web services, take a look at Amazon.com. Amazon.com is one of the main sites that allows its customers to create an Interactive shopping cart for their own personal website(!) that links directly to Amazon's enormous product database. Using their API, a designer can build a storefront which pulls all the data (pricing, images in different sizes, all manner of product details) in a short amount of time.  The developer runs a query, using keywords, product title, author, etc, and the web service pulls the data back as a xml-formatted packet that can easily be displayed using XSL or regular HTML code.

Web services are the backbone for one of Zunch clients.  This Website is the first Zunch-developed site to use Web services to provide up to date ticket information to their customers. Looking for tickets to the next Texas Rangers home stand? No problem. Just go to the Texas Rangers page, select the game you're interested in and voila! A current list of all tickets for that day's game shows up, displaying pricing, the number of available tickets and seating information. There's also a link showing a stadium seating chart.

As you can see, the uses for remote Web services are wide and incredibly useful. The dev team at Zunch has the know-how and experience to implement any Web service to suit your website's needs.

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