Hi,
I am a newbie to web-services. What is a good way to learn web-services implementation using java, xml and spring? Are there any good books which cover this topic in good width? Or, are there any online resources, tutorials, etc.?
Also, what would be good projects to understand this hands-on?
Any recommendations>?
The Java SOA Cookbook is very good - doesn't really cover Sping.
The Spring Recipes book is pretty good at explaining How-To do things in Spring
I originally learned Web Services concepts without books, so my opinions may be biased, but I don't think books would help much in the beginning. Once you get to some intermediate state where you need to study security, SOA, etc, maybe books would help.
I needed to get an intern up to speed on Web Services, so I made him implement a two-player game of Reversi using Web Services as the business logic layer with SQL Server underneath it. The UI layer was a desktop executable hitting the service.
You can do something like that using Axis2 and Swing. Once you've built the first UI, you can then try to consume the same service using .NET/Ruby/jQuery or something too to demonstrate the interoperability.
I found books okay, but in the end I used spring web services and it was such a breeze. Highly recommend the reference manual. It has a great introduction on the approach spring web services has taken with the contract first approach and why it is recommended.
http://static.springframework.org/spring-ws/sites/1.5/reference/html/index.html
Cheers.
Some IDEs have web service wizards and projects that take you through setting up a service. They might not be a great way to learn about web services by themselves, but you'll be exposed to some key terms and ideas that can help you build a vocabulary and starting point.
I would not recommend Java Web Services: Up and Running book. I am reading it now and I don't recommend it to newbie.