Web services have changed the landscape of how we program internet applications. The rise of XML and HTTP, and with it a raft of specifications built on SOAP, has led to a new generation of distributed applications.

Finding your way in this new world can be tricky, however, with much noise being made by vendors and standards groups alike. If you actually want to use web services in your application, how do you know what technologies to trust? Learning the acronyms is often tricky enough. SOAP, SOA, REST, WSDL: and they're just the easy ones!

This collection of articles from XML.com's Web Services site is here to help you navigate through designing web services implementations. Written by regular XML.com columnist Will Provost and Thomson Corporation's Dr. Hao He, these articles will help orient you as to what web services actually are and how to design them. You will benefit from the experience of practioners deploying web services in the real world, and be shown where pitfalls lie.