Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

I am not very firsthand familiar with "web services". Yes I have read a bit about it and I too can hear the incessant "web services" buzz, but I am still a servlet and/or jsp web application person.

When designed well, servlets or jsps can TOTALLY separate presentation and logic and the overall app is hard to beat. They can also incorporate and manipulate data in many formats including XML. They can present data in many formats with stylesheets. They can communicate with disparate systems via RMI or XML-RPC or a number of other means. When done with correct design that upholds separation of logic and presentation this makes re-use, extension and maintenance a breeze. Straight up JSP pages with beans (and hence no logic in the HTML/JSP page) become a very powerful, re-usable and extensible web application.

That said if web services can really live up to the hype and provide a back end application that meshes with (or molds itself into) a front end web application at the drop of a hat (removing all the underlying complexity of HTTP, etc) AND improve flexibility, extensibility and maintainability then its definitely worth it. The verdict is out on whether or not its just buzz, but the buzz is so loud that something must be out there, right?

Well now is my chance to actually get into web services and understand more of what it is about. Oreilly has a mini tutorial that walks through several simple example applications. Using the example classes, WSDL descriptor files, server side "wrapper" code, deployment with Apache Axis, and a client, you have simple web services. Simple? Thats debatable, but its an example of Web Services and having at least a basic understanding helps in evaluation the correct tool for future jobs.

Its worth a look, checkit via the link.   Creating Web Services with Apache Axis: Oreilly