C[omp]ute

From: andrew cooke <andrew@...>

Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 13:41:41 -0400

This is surprisingly complex (well, perhaps not surprising, depending
on your view of Sun/Java).

There's a newish Java standard for web services called JAX-WS.  This
has an emphasis on SOAP, but includes REST.  This is implemented and
available in JDK 6, apparently.

There's also a standard for restful web services, called JAX-RS.
Despite JAX-WS also supporting REST, this seems to be largely separate
and is not yet released in a JDK.  However, the reference
implementation is available as the Jersey project.

Jersey (the implementation of the REST-specific library) is at
https://jersey.dev.java.net/

There's a more detailed explanation of the above confusion at
http://www.rekk.de/bloggy/2008/java-webservices-relationship-of-jax-ws-jax-rs-metro-and-jersey/

Two perhaps useful articles on calling REST services from Java -
JAX-WS - http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/WebServices/restful/
JAX-RS - http://blogs.sun.com/enterprisetechtips/entry/consuming_restful_web_services_with

I think the idea is that JAX-RS simplies JAX-WS for REST, so probably
builds on top of it.

Also, Metro is the web services stack for Glassfish, which is an
applications server.  Metro can also be used standalone (or in Tomcat
etc).  It makes heavy use of annotations.  It conains/will contain
both JAX-WS and JAX-RS (Jersey) implementations.

All the above offer both client and server support.  There is some
work happening towards SOAP/WS-.. interop with MS libraries too.

Andrew