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Supplement: The adventures of JWSDP

Sun Microsystems finally takes action on the Web services front

By Frank Sommers, JavaWorld.com, 05/17/02

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Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge the fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the Type-Writer, for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know that I own this curiosity-breeding little joker. (Mark Twain, Letter to Densmore, Yost & Co., March 19, 1875)


Thus wrote Mark Twain to the Remington company (which partnered with Densmore, Yost & Co. to produce the first commercially successful typewriter) about the tool generations of writers later found so indispensable. Always eager to be on the cutting edge—he was the first to submit a fully typed manuscript to a publisher—Twain had more than his share of frustrations with early typewriters: "The early machine was full of caprices, full of defects—devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character..."

If you worked with early incarnations of Web services technologies, you might well share Twain's sentiment: Without the proper tools, creating Web services can be as excruciating as, say, preparing the manuscript for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with just a pen. Formatting XML messages and converting between Java and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) invocations by hand, for example, would be so error-prone as to render Web services programming an impractical proposition. Therefore, tools that automate these tedious tasks assume great importance if Web services are to become standard parts of a Java developer's bag of tricks. But Web service development tools have up to now been simplistic, often standing in a programmer's way, instead of offering a helping hand.

Enter JWSDP

This situation is about to change. According to this year's JavaOne tenor, Web services are here, and you can start developing them right away. JavaOne's organizers devoted an entire track to Web services, with no less than 78 full sessions on the topic. At the heart of those talks was a set of APIs—JAXP (Java APIs for XML Processing), JAXR (Java API for XML Registries), JAXM (Java APIs for XML Messaging), to name a few—exposing Web service technology implementations to Java programmers. Despite that overall excitement, the tone of many sessions made it clear: Most of these technologies are works in progress. The ink is still wet on the specs, and conspicuous construction signs are posted on the reference implementations.

The one bright spot was Sun Microsystems' Java Web Services Developer Pack, or JWSDP, which Sun made available for early access download from its Website. At JavaOne, Sun positioned the JWSDP as a tool "most developers" would find suitable for Web service development, suggesting you don't have to be a Mark Twain of Java to start programming Web services now.

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