This book introduces the main ideas and concepts behind core and extended Web services technologies and provides students with a primer for each of the major technologies that have emerged in this space. In addition, Understanding Web Services summarizes the major architectural approaches to Web services, examines the role of Web services within the .NET and J2EE communities, and provides information about major product offerings from Microsoft, IBM, IONA, HP, Sun, BEA, Oracle, and others.

Key topics include: XML facilities for structuring and serializing data, how WSDL maps services onto communication protocols and transports, WSDL support for RPC-oriented and document-oriented interactions and UDDI data formats.