Authors and readers alike have their own religions when it comes to the best way to explain a given topic. In this tutorial, most of the examples do not contain a blow-by-blow description of what the code is doing. This is intentional. Long lists of code are hard for readers to follow and provide no long-term benefit. Readers spend time learning the variable naming conventions and aspects, which distracts them from learning about the topic at hand.

We have also decided against printing out Javadocs, which are freely available for download from the site. We have also avoided writing a tutorial that contains highly speculative information on specifications not even close to release. While we are early adopters of many technologies used to create Web services, we have decided to create a tutorial that has a longer shelf life and provides more for your money.

The momentum of Java and Web services will help revolutionize information technology. The author team has debated countless hours over the "best" way to help others build solutions that are extremely scalable, highly available, and easily maintainable. Many late nights have resulted in, we hope, the right mix of architectural advice and implementation details.