Some programmers familiar with other distributed application environments, such as traditional client/server and other n-tier architectures, might initially think Web services unnecessarily complicated for their needs. Others might find Web services simpler to work with than what they are used to, but less efficient at run time because the content communicated between Web services and their consumers is text-based (HTTP and XML). The main advantages already noted (see
Earlier attempts to standardize interoperability) include the reliance on widely available (ubiquitous) standards that are already in place for other uses (HTTP/S and XML). Added to this is the relative simplicity (compared to CORBA, for example) of supplemental standards, like SOAP and WSDL, needed to complete the general toolset required for implementation.
