On integrating web services from the ground up into CS1/CS2

Abstract

Web services technology is a burgeoning technology that has received tremendous amount of attention in the software industry in recent years under the broader umbrella of service-oriented architecture (SOA). While Web services have been incorporated in many industries in the market place in the last few years, they are only beginning to appear in the academia, primarily in upper division and graduate CS curricula. In this paper, we share our belief that the Web services technology can and should be introduced early in a CS curriculum. We describe a number of scenarios that Web services can be integrated into CS1/CS2 to make them more interesting and more importantly, make the students better prepared for upper division classes and for the industry upon graduation. These scenarios can be incorporated without compromising the core materials presently covered in many CS1/CS2 sequence.