Summary
In this chapter, we reviewed the basics of Web services. As we saw, the larger picture is confusing, as many standards and software implementations exist. Ironically, despite the confusion within the marketplace, the process of building and using a Web service is simple. While Web services and the surrounding tools are still very young, it is a very promising technology for the future.
In future chapters, we will delve into details of implementing a JSP-based Web service. At the JSP Insider Web site (http://www.jspinsider.com), we have a bimonthly newsletter called the JSPBuzz. This newsletter is created with a combination of XML and JSP. We will use the data and examples from the JSPBuzz newsletter as a real-world example of using JSP and XML together. More importantly, we will apply Web services to the JSPBuzz to expose it to the world. We will show how the JSP Insider is building remote services that you can use to access the information stored in the JSPBuzz newsletter.
We've finished the last of the introductory chapters. These first three chapters were a concise review of the information needed to give newer programmers a basic level of understanding of JSP and XML. Now we are ready to dig into the meat of JSP and XML. The next chapter starts the fun partlearning how to practically combine JSP and XML in your everyday projects.