One of the powerful benefits of utilizing standards-based Web services is the practically limitless ways that they can be leveraged. That's the whole idea behind standards in the first place, and when utilizing XML with SOAP and REST-based Web services interfaces, this is especially true for data and related over-the-Web business functionality. Getting live data and functionality to perform to your requirements, rather than the other way around, is the ultimate goal.
One way StrikeIron demonstrates this is by integrating the various Web services we provide into third-party applications. For example, we recently integrated our US Address Verification Web service into Salesforce.com - a leading onDemand CRM application. We used their new APEX integration capabilities to achieve this.
Now, with a simple click of the button from any contact record, the address of the contact can be verified as existing (via reference data from the United States Post Office), corrected if necessary, and also enhanced with additional data. This all occurs directly from within the Leads, Accounts, and Contacts tabs within the Salesforce application. It is available today on Salesforce's AppExchange if you'd like to take it for a test drive: https://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?id=a0330000003gvO1AAI
The important point is the underlying Web service has not changed and as always is available 24-7 via our platform and all of our redundant online infrastructure. In this case, it can now also be leveraged from within an application that somebody is already using on a daily basis, and without a second thought about XML.
Of course this is just the beginning. We and our partners have integrated several of our large catalog of data feeds and business functions accessible over the Web via Web services. This extends the reach and usefulness of these Web services to beyond just developers who know how to incorporate a WSDL endpoint. In addition to being accessible within Salesforce, they are also available as part of developer frameworks such as Zend's PHP framework, Microsoft Excel (via our SOA Express Web services client for Excel), IBM's QEDWiki application, several other IDE's, other CRM applications such as Microsoft CRM and Goldmine, and many more to come. After all, getting live data to you, where ever you happen to be working, is the name of the game. When utilizing real-time data over the Web, we believe you should grow your online IT assets without having to grow your online IT infrastructure.
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