Everyone seems to be talking about Ajax and Web 2.0 these days. While the UIs of Ajax-enabled web sites such as Google Maps and Flickr are undeniably cool, they wouldn't exist without a strong SOA/Web Services infrastructure behind the scenes.

"Web Services" is an overloaded term. While SOAP is a mainstay in the web services world, there are other equally valid flavors (REST, XML-RPC) that accomplish the same goal -- decoupling the data from the presentation layer, the platform, and even the programming language used.

Rather than talking about web services in the abstract, this talk shows examples of each flavor of web services as it is used in the wild by leading web companies. Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, and eBay have all taken slightly different approaches to the same problem. We'll compare and contrast their public-facing offerings.

There is no one right way to expose your API via web services. After this talk, you should have a better idea of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each variant. Rest assured, Ajax clients will be demonstrated along side more traditional consumers of web services.