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.

Near the end of the class we briefly went over the RESTful web service philosophy. REST seemed, to me, to be a lot easier to use as it didn't require nearly as much setup, and it utilized the pre-existing http protocols (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE). Also with XML going only one way, a well designed RESTful web service should be faster than its SOAP counter part. The internet is a big place so there is plenty of room for both philosophies, but given RESTful's smaller learning curve and being seen as the "trendy" choice, I can see it continuing to increase in popularity, particularly among younger developers. Anyways I decided to do a some research on the subject and wanted to share what I have found.

http://www.ajaxonomy.com/2008/xml/web-services-part-1-soap-vs-rest - An excellent article that gives a very good description of the two philosophies and their respective pros and cons. “Part 2” covers WSDL vs. WADL, which is also a really good read.
http://blogs.oracle.com/SOAandEDA/2009/04/soap_or_rest_its_about_your_pr.html – Horror of horrors, this article suggest to focus on business needs instead of technology.

Technorati Tags: Web development

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.

Technorati Tags: Best practices, Java, Open source, Programming, Web design, Web development

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.

Technorati Tags: Best practices, Java, Web design, Web development