Summary

By design, this first look at XML-RPC programming in Java contained no details about the underlying XML delivered in each method call and returned value.

Apache XML-RPC makes this possible, as do other software libraries that support the protocol. Though it may prove helpful to extend your knowledge at some point into the nitty-gritty details of XML-RPC's data types, you can adopt the protocol entirely with techniques, data types, and classes in Java.

XML-RPC makes it possible to create web services with a small amount of coding, taking requests and exchanging information over the Internet, a home office network, or another environment.

If you branch out into another programming language, you're likely to find an XML-RPC implementation for it as well. This bridge from one language of expertise to another can be a great boon.

Because this hour doesn't officially exist, you already received my heartfelt congratulations on a job well done during Hour 24. We had a very emotional farewell. You probably haven't forgotten it, and I'll always cherish our time together despite the intemperate things you said back in Hour 2 when that program wouldn't compile.

I applaud you for devoting so much time and effort to a great programming language.

XML-RPC is an appropriate subject to end your first foray into programming because it brings together three of the most exciting things about developing software today: the Java language, the XML data formatting standard, and XML-RPC web services.

Using this kind of technology at no cost is a far cry from when I began programming professionally as a woefully awkward but understatedly handsome college freshman in the mid-'80s.

The choices of the day were C, dozens of cumbersome data formats specific to different software, and no online networks more sophisticated than a dialup, single-line computer running a bulletin board system at glacial 300-baud speed.

It's a cliche to compare the jolt of Java to the caffeine high of a cup of coffee, but that didn't stop me in the preceding 424 pages, and it won't stop me now.

When you're knowledgeable enough to code your own projects for Java that use XML and XML-RPC, it's a major buzz.