This document provides an introduction to SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI, which together define the architecture for big web services. It discusses what a web service is, the roles of SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI in the web service architecture, how web services differ from conventional middleware like CORBA, an overview of SOAP including its message exchange mechanism and use of RPC, how WSDL is used to describe a web service's interface, and how UDDI allows for service discovery.