Web services

Study for Week 10

This week we will look at web services: SOAP and RESTful web services.

Web services allow your code to call other code running on other computers over the internet.

In addition, you can expose your own system as a web service to allow other systems on the internet to call your own code.

At the end of this session, you should be able to:

  • Understand the purpose of remote procedure calls and web services
  • Understand why HTTP-based web services might be preferred over other remote procedure call technologies
  • Explain the differences between SOAP and RESTful web services
  • Use JAX-RS to create a RESTful web service
  • Use JAX-RS to create a RESTful web service client

Web services

What are web services and why have they become successful?

JAX-WS

Creating SOAP web services in Java EE:

JAX-RS

Creating RESTful web services in Java EE:

I recommend reading Chapter 14 (SOAP) and Chapter 15 (REST) of Beginning Java EE 7: http://find.lib.uts.edu.au/?R=OPAC_b2874770

If you don't have time for both chapters, then I recommend focussing your efforts on JAX-RS (Chapter 15).