Our REST Web Service will sit on a Server "somewhere" our Angular client will sit on a user Browser "somewhere else" so all call to the Web Service are Asynchronous !!!! IMPORTENT the call may take a while so Angular has a "Callback" feature to update your code (the component) when the results are back this is an Observable (older version of Angular used Promises) My code will subscribe to the Observable, this means my code will run when the HTTP call completes