The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

Web Services

    A family of standards
   promoted by the W3C for working with other business,
   developers and programs through open protocols,
   languages and APIs, including XML, Simple Object Access
   Protocol, WSDL and UDDI.

   W3C Web Services (http://w3.org/2002/ws).

   (2004-06-23)