We’re setting up a website that schedules video-conferencing sessions for end-users (using our own technology). We’re interested in providing access to this functionality to "corporate clients" to use through their own site.
Initially, we were thinking of having an API key given to each corporate client, and modules could be built in any language to fetch the data from our site. However, our requirements are changing and we’re exploring how the data should still be visible to the user of the ‘corporate client’ even if a network disconnection takes place between their server and ours.
What are the mechanisms by which a web site can provide access to its data / functions to other web sites?
I would suggest, REST. REST is a lightweight software architecture designed to facilitate access to resources over HTTP/HTTPS.
REST constraints state that there is a separation of components and language agnostic interfaces among others, so your clients won’t have to worry about using Java because you’re using Java, for example. Aditionally, REST web services are supposed to be cacheable, which may help fit your desire to avoid network issues.
You can learn more about REST here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer