This free online course will teach you how to create Java web services using SOAP and Axis. Web services are an extremely popular communication mechanism between remote systems, and a very marketable skill to have on one's resume.

Axis is open source framework for building Java web services using SOAP, which is a standard protocol for XML-based web services that allows Java-based systems to communicate remotely with other systems running other languages such as Microsoft C#.

Course Prep:

1. View the Java Web Services lecture in Powerpoint format (also available here in pdf format), which will provide an overview of Java Web Services and several useful code samples.
2. Install Tomcat 5.0.28 or later (follow the instructions for creating a Tomcat web application).
3. Download Axis 1.4 from our friends at Apache. Inside the zip file you'll find an axis-1_4\webapps\axis folder. Install Axis by expanding the axis folder into your Tomcat webapps folder. If done correctly, you should see a webapps\axis folder on your system.

Course Exercises:

For this course, you will build a SOAP web service that provides an account balance to requesting applications in the form of a SOAP message. You will also build a client application that creates and sends a SOAP message requesting this account balance.

Verify Your Axis Installation

This free online course will teach you how to use Java to programmatically work with XML in a web application. Please complete the XML and XSLT Overview Course before taking this course, which will provide you with an introduction to XML and XSLT.

Course Prep:

1. Read chapter 2 in the J2EE and XML Development textbook from Manning Publishing Co (free chapter).
2. View the Java XML and XSLT lecture (also available in pdf format here).

The exercises in this course build on the web application created in the J2EE Course - Building Servlet Web Applications course. Please complete that course first before starting the XML and XSLT Programming With JAXP course.

Course Exercises:

1. Open the Eclipse Tomcat project created in the J2EE Course - Building Servlet Web Applications course and add a Java class called AccountBean.java. Create a getAccountInfo(String User, String Password) method that builds an XML String in the format shown below.

   Note: Use JAXP methods such as createElement and appendChild - do not use String concatenation (there's nothing wrong with String concatenation, but you won't learn to use JAXP if you rely on String concatenation). Replace the user and password values with the values the user enters from the login.html page.

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

This free online course will teach you how to create a JSP page, and how to use the Model 2 Design pattern to build extensibility and scalability into your J2EE web applications.

Course Prep:

1. Read Chapter 3 in the Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages textbook.
2. View the JavaServer Pages Powerpoint slides (also available in pdf format here).

If you have not worked with servlets before, then I highly recommend that you start there first. JSP pages are compiled into servlets by the web server, so it's very important to understand how servlets work under the hood before trying to work with JSP pages.

Course Overview:

You'll first convert the servlet from the J2EE Course - Building Servlet Web Applications to a JSP page with the same functionality. The resulting JSP page will be small compared to the servlet code, and you should start to see how easy it is to create JSP pages with a line or two of Java inserted between the HTML tags.

This free online course will teach you how to build dynamic web applications using Java Servlets. You'll learn how to handle HTTP requests from a browser and return HTTP responses with dynamically generated HTML. You'll also learn about sessions, cookies, and how to package and deploy a servlet-based web application to a Tomcat web server.

Course Prep:

1. Read chapter 2 in the Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages textbook.
2. View the Java Servlets Powerpoint lecture (also available in pdf format here).

Course Exercises:

1. Download and install the Sysdeo plugin in Eclipse, and create a new Tomcat project called assign03. Review the "Creating a Tomcat Web Application" course for assistance with this step.
   

2. Download a pre-built HTML account login form that posts to a login servlet: login.html (NOTE: right-click on the link and select "Save Target As"). Place login.html in the root folder of your Tomcat project (the same location as index.html from the Creating a Tomcat Web Application course).
   

3. Configure your web application so that login.html is the default welcome page.
   

This free online course will cover installCation and configuration of Tomcat, and creation of a basic J2EE web application. You'll learn how to configure a default HTML welcome page by understanding the web.xml deployment descriptor, and will learn how to set the web server port number by understanding the server.xml deployment descriptor.

Course Prep:

1. Read Chapter 1 in the Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages textbook.

2. View the J2EE_Web_Applications Powerpoint lecture (also available in pdf format here).
3. Install Java.

   Tomcat requires a Java J2SE SDK (standard edition software development kit, also referred to as a JDK) to be installed on your system.  It will not work with only a JRE (Java runtime edition) so be sure to install the Java 1.4.2 or greater SDK before installing Tomcat. Here's a link to download the Java J2SE SDK 1.4.2.

Course Exercises: