Things to consider when exposing data as information according to XML

Question

I understand that this is a broad question but I'd appreciate some input on this.

I want to know what are some important aspects to consider when a team decides to expose their data to the outside world. This will have to be done via webservices right? I believe security and network latency would be the biggest points but then are there specific technologies that help in this regard or is it mainly a design issue? If security is a big concern then should REST even be thought of?

Also, I am in the J2EE world. I've heard that groovy is begining to make webservices a bit easier. Is this because dealing with XML is easier in groovy or are there any other perks as well?

I'd appreciate links to some good helpfull resources as well.

Answer 1

Web services used to mean SOAP but can also mean XML or JSON over RESTful HTTP. For the former, take a look at WS-Security and WSS4J. For the latter, good old SSL and Digest Authentication does the job.