> Just out of curiosity what do you consider a "proper"
> web service? A web service is simply a URL endpoint
> that returns data. Whether that data is delimited
> text, XML, a message using the SOAP protocol, etc.
> doesn't matter. Just call it wherever you would call
> it for any web service.
By "proper" web service, he meant "a web service for which there is tooling and plumbing support directly in the server", i.e. a web service that he could use the high level WS APIs to access, with the expectation that whatever chicanery may be involved in dealing with a remote client within a JEE server, the API and bundled software would handle it.
Versus making direct socket calls himself and managing the resources manually for an "unsupported" web service.
As the REST APIs get bundled in to the Java WS stack, obviously this kind of simple GET web resource will be able to be managed by the servers WS stack. But for now you need to "roll your own" (ideally via the higher level utilities like URLConnection or HttpClient) rather than relying on the servers facilities to handle that transaction for you.
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