Trends: REST to over take SOAP?
Not too long ago I took a class for developing web services. The content of the class focused almost exclusively on developing SOAP based web services. While there is nothing particularly difficult about SOAP, it seemed to require a lot of steps; defining your data elements, creating a wsdl, and all the tools you had to use. While having a contract can be beneficial when the web service will be facing external clients, it seemed to be a lot of steps to go through to get a web service going and also heavy-weight.
Link Dump 9/17
http://www.sixrevisions.com/ - A very active website that focuses on web design.
http://www.net.tutsplus.com/ - Has excellent tutorials on web design and development
http://java.sun.com/blueprints/corej2eepatterns/Patterns/index.html – An absolute must check out for all Java developers. Focuses on best practices for Java developers. Though I wouldn't recommend it for the very new as the concepts may be a bit advanced.
http://www.ohloh.net/ - A very good place to start if you are looking to contribute to an open source project.
Link Dump
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ - An excellent with a focus on front end web development. Frequently updated with very well written articles.
http://www.alistapart.com/ - Another excellent website focusing on web development. However there is more of an emphasis of best practices, growing trends, and new ideas, instead of just the latest technologies.
http://www.javamex.com/ - A java site that does a really good job of getting down into the nuts a bolts of how Java works.
