How does Java technology relate to SOA/web services?

A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a component model that relates the functional units of an application (services) through well-defined interfaces and contracts between the services. The interface is defined independently of the hardware, operating system, and programming language in which the service is implemented, letting services constructed on different systems interact with one another in a uniform, universal manner. SOAs are a loosely coupled alternative model to more-traditional, tightly coupled, object-oriented models.
The resulting web services let business rules and processes be defined in XML so software applications can communicate in a platform- and programming language-independent manner. XML technology makes data portable and facilitates the creation of messages, while Java technology makes code portable. The fact that XML and the Java language work well together makes them an ideal combination to build and deploy web services.
Learn more about it:

• The New to SOA and web services and New to XML pages on developerWorks will help you get oriented in these complex technologies.


• The Java web services series explores Java web services frameworks and new layers of functionality built on top of web services.


• "Build a RESTful web service" introduces the elegant architectural style called Representational State Transfer (REST) and shows how to use a Java-based framework for building RESTful web services.


• JAX-WS is a fundamental technology for developing SOAP-based and RESTful Java web services. The tutorial "Design and develop JAX-WS 2.0 web services" offers a hands-on introduction to this API.