Luckily the prestashop developers in their wisdom have incorporated a web services tool to allow access of the db contents not just from the front ( product presentation cms scripts) or from the back (the admin office) but also from 3rd party web services.

I have no experience in using SOAP or REST sort of things but I do have some OOprogramming experience. What I need to know is how do I go about setting up a web service.

There is also a zip file with some code you can download.