January 2015 Oak Brook, IL
Today, software developer mrc announces new web services capabilities within m-Power. m-Power is a web application development platform that businesses use across their organizations. It creates web applications such as report-writing, Business Intelligence, executive dashboards, customer portals, and mobile applications to name a few.
What is a web service?
Web Services help different applications communicate (and share data and services) with each other. Web services are platform and technology independent. They connect all types of applications across the web—even those built with different languages. For example, a web service can let a .NET application talk to a Java application and vice versa.
How are web services used?
Web services play a critical role in all aspects of the web. For instance, here are a few ways some businesses use web services today:
- Online retailers use web services to calculate shipping costs in real-time. These sites rely on web services provided by the shipping company to calculate shipping rates based on the item weight and customer's location.
- Travel search sites rely on web services to find the best travel deals. They use web services to pull data from many travel sites, and then combine (and rank) that data for their users.
- Email service providers (ESPs) use web services to integrate with other software. For instance, ESPs often provide web services that let users integrate email services with their existing CRM solution.
What does this enhancement offer?
With this new enhancement, m-Power now generates web services when users build a web app. This helps businesses:
- Improve development productivity
Because web services let different systems share data and functions with others, they simplify development. Rather than build every feature into new applications, developers can simply call existing web services from other applications. - Extend the life of older systems
Web services let new applications communicate with legacy systems. This lets businesses bring modern features to existing systems—without replacing the system itself. - Take advantage of the cloud
As businesses adopt more Software-as-a-Service options, and move some applications to cloud hosts, the need for integration grows. How will they connect their cloud, on-premise, and SaaS applications?
Web services provide a simple way to tie everything together. They let apps communicate with each other and share data—regardless of physical location. This lets businesses take full advantage of the cloud without worrying about integration.
"As businesses use an increasing number of services and applications, they need a way to tie everything together," says Tyler Wassell, mrc's Manager of Software Development. "This new enhancement gives m-Power users a simple method to quickly integrate their apps with other applications and systems."
###For additional information contact mrc via phone at 630.916.0662; via fax at 630.916.0663; via e-mail at mrc@mrc-productivity.com.
About mrc
mrc's development tool suite, m-Power, is used to create business applications and can run on any database or platform that supports Java (e.g. OS/400, Linux, Unix, and Windows). m-Power is used to create an endless variety of business web applications such as: Mobile apps, Web reports, dashboards, eCommerce apps, business intelligence, and more.
mrc was a recipient of the Apex Award for application development, is a long-time IBM Business Partner, and has been producing award-winning development software since 1981.