Amazon has become one of the first large businesses to open itself up for third parties with Web Services.(AWS). The move mirrors those of the UK government in trying create a more citizen centric Public Servcie.

Currently flavour of the month, Web Services are the next stage in connecting organisations across the internet. They allow organisations to link to another resource (not necessarily a website) and use part of that resources functionality.)

In Amazons case third parties will be able to access the catalogue, the database, promotional material and certain elements of the Shopping Cart Facility. The third party will then be able to repackage the information sent back as part of their own site.

AWS can be combined with the existing Associate program. Ian Worrell Websites has signed up for the new service. Pages on this site will slowly but hopefully seamlessly move from static pages, to static pages with externally garnered content from Amazon.

In light of the fact of the ongoing debate about the best methods for Web Services Amazon has decided to accept both XML and SOAP requests. This site however will only use the XML format.

An example of how this works can be seen below.

London XML example

The linked above requests an XML request from Amazon.com for all books on "London". Using a XSLT stylesheet the resulting page is transformed into a page of HTML.

London XML example

A list of books about London is not very exciting. However it is a foretaste of what is to come. One Stop Shops for citizen access to Public Services have moved a step further.

For instance if I this site was able to validate my identity I could have seamlessly linked to a wide variety of other resources such as benefits and taxation specific to myself.