Java Reference
In-Depth Information
10
Accessing Web Sources
What you Will learn in this chapter:
➤
How computers communicate with each other over networks and
the Internet
➤
What web services are and what the common web service stan-
dards are
➤
How to access web services and information on the Internet with
Java
➤
How to set up your own web services with Java
Wrox.com code doWnloads for this chapter
beginningjavaprogramming
on the Download Code tab. The code is in the Chapter 10
download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.
Since its inception, Java has always been merited for its strong networking support, enabling
computers to communicate with each other and transmit information between Java programs
over networks and the Internet. To say it in the words of John Cage—the 21st employee of
Sun Microsystems (where Java originated)—“the network is the computer.” This phrase was
reflected in Sun's philosophy and can be observed in Java as well.
In this day and age, programs rarely behave as an “island,” but communicate instead with a
vast array of other platforms. In fact, you have seen one example of this in the previous chap-
ter on how to communicate with database management systems in Java. This chapter takes
you a step further and shows you how to interact with websites and web services, and how to
create your own web services in Java to provide information to other parties.
Web applications are an incredibly important application area for Java, so much so that entire
topics have been devoted to the topic. Thus, this chapter will not be able to cover each and
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