Before you start

About this series

This tutorial series demonstrates how to create a stand-alone web services server and client application that you can easily run from the command line with Java SE 6 rather than from within Web application server containers. Using a simple Hello World example, you'll leverage the Eclipse IDE, Java SE 6, and Apache Ant to easily create fully functioning web services server and client applications. You'll also use the TCP/IP Monitor to examine the communication traffic between the server and client, and use the Eclipse Web Services Explorer tool to test the web service.

About this tutorial

This tutorial, Part 1 of the series, introduces you to publishing a web service application using the Eclipse IDE, Java SE 6, and Ant. It lays the groundwork for Part 2, which describes the creation of the web services client application.

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Objectives

After completing this tutorial you should know:

• What a web service is and the standards it uses in relation to a browser being used from within Eclipse to view the published Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file.
• How to create the server side of a web service, including how to install and configure the Eclipse IDE and the Java Development Kit (JDK) so that they perform together to generate the code that's compiled using Java SE 6.
• How to use the Ant Java-based build tool within the Eclipse IDE to run a special Java command to generate some of the code.

Prerequisites

This tutorial includes simple steps written for beginning- to intermediate-level Java programmers with some working knowledge of the Java language and Ant builds. Novice to more advanced Java developers will gain some knowledge of how to build, deploy, and run stand-alone web services servers and distributed clients to provide firewall-friendly remote communications and applications processing.

System requirements

To follow the examples, you need to download:

• Eclipse IDE for Java Developers
• Java SE 6

You don't have to download Ant, as its functionality is bundled with Eclipse. This tutorial uses the Ganymede Package for the Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers.

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Table of contents

• Before you start
• Set up your development environment
• Create the server
• Generate the server code with Ant
• Publish the web service
• View the WSDL
• Test the server
• Summary
• Appendix: A brief overview of web services terms and acronyms
• Resources
• About the authors

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Next steps from IBM

WebSphere Application Server can leverage its built in Web Services support to expose services to remote consumers in an industry-standard way.

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• Try: The no-charge WebSphere Application Server Community Edition is a pre-integrated, lightweight Java 5 application server built on Apache Tomcat and includes built in Web Services support.
• Article: Learn how to use of the JAX-WS programming model to create dispatch and dynamic proxy clients and how to create an asynchronous Web service client.
• Tutorial: This tutorial takes you through the steps to deploy Data Web Services to the WebSphere Application Server Community Edition.
• Demo: This demo shows how to extract and install the IBM Java Platform, Java EE 5 SDK with WebSphere Application Server.
• Buy: WebSphere Application Server - Express

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