This document discusses web services and service-oriented architectures (SOA). It defines a web service as a software system identified by a URI that exposes its interfaces using XML. SOA technologies allow services to exchange messages and describe themselves so they can be published and discovered. The document then outlines the various technologies that make up the "web services stack", including those that handle transport (SOAP), descriptions (WSDL), and discovery (WSIL, UDDI). It provides examples of how XML, SOAP, WSDL, and WSIL/UDDI work and explains their roles in enabling web services.