web services overview

[nivas ratthaaq]

Hi, I'm not completely new to web services. But I got confused over the terminology used. This is what I understood. Please correct me where I'm wrong!!
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Three methods of consuming and producing web services: XML-RPC, SOAP and REST

1.XML-RPC:
JAX-RPC,JAX-WS comes under this. JAX-WS is successor to the JAX-RPC which supports message-oriented Web services,send XML messages over HTTP without SOAP..etc

2.SOAP:
AXIS is an implementation of SOAP. Axis (which provides implementation of SOAP)provides Eclipse plugins which can be used to consume and produce the web services easily in a wizard fashion.

3.REST: Its altogether diff than above..I did not do any research on this.

My questions:
1.How to decide which one to select If I want to consume any web service AXIS, JAX-RPC,JAX-WS ?
2.As AXIS is so simple with the Eclipse plugin I would like to consume/produce web service using AXIS? What is the necessity to go for JAX-RPC and JAX-WS?
3.I read some where that AXIS does not support JAX-RPC?

I really got confused on the classification side. Whether they are talking about implementation side or specifications side??? I'm not sure whether my classification is completely wrong or right.. I browse the net and see examples how to consume and produce but I did not see any classification . Please help me. Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Vas

[Dan Drillich]

Vas,

JAX-RPC is regarded as an old technology. For new implementations you should consider JAX-WS.
Please have a look at JAX-RPC versus JAX-WS.

Regards,
Dan

[Ulf Dittmer]

1.XML-RPC:
JAX-RPC,JAX-WS comes under this. JAX-WS is successor to the JAX-RPC which supports message-oriented Web services,send XML messages over HTTP without SOAP..etc

There are several misconceptions here. XML-RPC is an old protocol that is rarely used any more, at least not in the Java space. You can still get an implementation from ws.apache.org, though.

Both JAX-RPC and JAX-WS are not based on XML-RPC, but on SOAP. As Dan said, JAX-RPC is obsolete; don't use it for anything new.

Axis is just an implementation. It supports several APIs: SAAJ, JAX-RPC (in Axis 1.x), JAX-WS (in Axis 2.x). Other implementations are available, in particular the Metro stack for SAAJ and JAX-WS. The SAAJ API is low-level, though; you'd rarely use it directly.

The real choice is between a REST service (using the JAX-RS API) and a SOAP service (using the JAX-WS API). If you don't know much about REST, check out some of the articles linked in the http://faq.javaranch.com/java/WebServicesFaq. In general, REST is lighter-weight -particularly the client-, but it doesn't offer all the options of a full SOAP stack (like the security provided by WS-Security).

[nivas ratthaaq]

Ulf Dittmer ,
Thanks for your details explanation which gives me some idea where to start. I bet If I search in the internet and spend some more time still I may not understand what you have explained here. Thanks a lot.

Regards,
Nivas