Treating a Web Service as a Black Box

Software developers often use the term black box to describe a module for which the developer does not care how the processing is performed, but instead, the developer knows that the code, when provided valid inputs will produce predictable results.

Based on a web service’s loosely coupled relationship with a program that uses the service, the developer can often feel confident that he or she can treat the web service as a black box, not worrying about how the web service performs a task, but rather that, with valid input, the web service will function consistently.