Java Web Services: Up and Running, 2nd Edition

Where Is the Best Place to Be in Java Web Services?

This book is a code-centric tour through the APIs and implementation technologies that support web services under Java. The tour has taken seven chapters. To set up an answer to the question posed in this section’s title, it may be useful to review the stops along the way.

Chapter 1

This chapter opens the tour with a broad look at REST-style and SOAP-based services. This overview includes a short history of alternatives to distributed software systems, such as systems based on the DOA that predate and still compete with deliberately lightweight web services. The chapter sketches the relationship between web services and SOA, which can be viewed as a reaction against DOA. Chapter 1 likewise clarifies the core meaning and especially the spirit of REST as an approach to the design of distributed software systems, especially systems built on in-place, widely available, and free protocols and technologies such as HTTP and XML/JSON. A dominant theme in this overview of web services is interoperability, which in turn requires language and platform neutrality. Chapter 1 ends with the implementation of a small RESTful service that consists of a JSP script and two backend POJO classes. The predictions RESTful service is published with the Tomcat web server, and the sample client calls are done with the curl utility.

Chapter 2

This chapter narrows the focus to the various APIs and API implementations available for programming and delivering ...