"Web services" is quite a hot buzzword these days, but few people really understand the power behind these simple connection between machines. Web services have evolved to much more than just a simple exchange of data, and this new piece will help you get started.

In Building PHP Web services with PEAR, they introduce you to the PEAR clases to help you quickly develop your own web service. Believe it or not, it really is quite simple. Of course, they give some sample code and do a wonderful job explaining it so you can keep up with the flow of the script. WSDL is where things start to get a little bit tricky, but thankfully, PEAR has a class to help out with that too. It helps you construct a SOAP request to send across to the patient server...

There is some argument, however, in the web services world about the SOAP protocol - one side saying it's too complex and resource-intensive for what it is, and the other notes that though it is a strange format to work with, it's still a format.

What do you all think? Is XML-RPC a better choice?