Preface

This book is a desktop quick reference for programmers writing web services or web service clients using the Java™ programming language. Part I offers a fast-paced but comprehensive tutorial covering the web service APIs that are part of the J2EE 1.4 platform and the Java Web Services Developer Pack (JWSDP), both of which provide all of the software needed to develop and test web services using Sun's reference implementations of these technologies. These chapters are followed by a quick-reference section that details each class and interface in the web service APIs covered in the tutorial.

This book is intended to be used in conjunction with the best-selling O'Reilly titles Java in a Nutshell, by David Flanagan and Java Enterprise in a Nutshell, by William Crawford, Jim Farley, and David Flanagan. Java in a Nutshell introduces the Java programming language and provides an API quick reference for the core packages and classes of the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) platform, while Java Enterprise in a Nutshell does the same for the APIs in the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). Web services leverage technology that is provided by J2EE (including XML, servlets, and Enterprise JavaBeans™) and therefore at least a basic working knowledge of the Java programming language and its enterprise features is required in order to get the best from this book.