In the '80s, the PC computing revolution took off. Snicker, snicker, PCs will never be serious. This revolution networked individual PCs but didn't change how corporate IT was implemented. Snicker, snicker, great for brochureware and shopping. We're now evolving to allowing applications to be easily built through networked businesses.
Web services is a subset of a service-oriented architecture.
Pretty basic stuff, really. XML gets returned. Java and Java-based marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.