Nowadays, it has become the practice to build applications as a set of components (that are distributed across a network of machines and work together as if all the sets of components are available from the single machine.)
Traditionally(传统上), distributed application logic known for DCOM, CORBA or RMI, laid a reliable(可靠) and scalable(可升级的) platform to meet the growing needs of applications.
These component-based technologies work very well in an intranet environment.
Only thing is we cannot use this technology over the Internet because the technologies do not interoperate(交互).
A pinch over Webservices Vs. Remoting
Browser-based Web applications, in contrast(相反，大不相同), are loosely coupled(松耦合) and remarkably(特别好,引人注目) interoperable.
They communicate using HTTP to exchange MIME-typed data in a wide range of formats.
Web services adapt the traditional Web programming model for use from all sorts of applications, not just browser based ones.
They exchange SOAP messages using HTTP and other Internet protocols.
Because web services rely on industry standards, including HTTP, XML, SOAP, and WSD, to expose applications' functionality on the Internet, they are independent of(独立于) programming language, platform, and device.
Thanks to Microsoft inventing of ASP.NET Web services and .NET Remoting.
Web services infrastructure provides a simple API for Web services based on mapping SOAP messages to method invocations.
This is achievable by providing a very simple programming model based on mapping SOAP message exchanges to individual method invocations.
Over a period of time, the perception() of building applications is changing very rapidly whatever it may be, either desktop applications, web applications, or distributed applications.