irm in PowerShell

The irm command in PowerShell is an alias for the cmdlet Invoke-RestMethod. This is used to send HTTP and HTTPS commands to RESTful web services and retrieve the response. It is used to interact with APIs and download data from the web.

Gaining a Strong, Technical Grasp of Web Services Concepts (aka Why Soap?)

One must know web services concepts if one claims to be a Windows programmer in this day and age. Here are the most popular concepts that any self-respecting Windows don would be able to define at the drop of the hat.

(I know we've been talking advanced stuff about WSDL etc in these blog posts but let's just do some CONCEPT CONSOLIDATION of web services now, just as a REFRESHER).

Q1. WHY is XML so important for web services?
XML is used as a data interchange format for web services. It is what the SOAP protocol is based on. It's human readability allows for easier diagnostics and human reading of web interfaces, or web exposed interfaces.

Q2. What is THE SOAP PROTOCOL. What makes it so SPECIAL in WEB SERVICE WORLD?
SOAP is mentioned everywhere in web services. SOAP is a protocol for exchanging TYPED information across the web. The phrased TYPED INFORMATION is most crucial. This is what enables us to define how to access SERVICES, OBJECTS and SERVERS in a platform-independent manner. That's the SECOND important point about the SOAP protocol, the PLATFORM INDEPENDENT nature. So, to recap, "TYPENESS" and "PLATFORM INDEPENDENCE". These are two key characteristics of SOAP protocol.

Q3. While we're on this topic. we might as well mention WSDL.
Used to declare the web service interfaces; return types and so forth. It's the XML grammar underlying these definitions.

Q4. What is UDDI?
Some kind of web services global registry concept.