Sun has done an excellent job integrating StrikeIron Web services directly into the NetBeans IDE, making it easy to integrate the functionality of all StrikeIron Web services into a Java-based Web application. Validating addresses and phone numbers, calculating sales tax rates, sending SMS messages, retrieving D&B data, providing driving directions, or accessing any of the Web services StrikeIron provides can be done in a couple of minutes. Best of all, since StrikeIron handles all of the ongoing data updates within its data center, the developer never has to worry about keeping the external data current. It's all included "out of the box."
Here is an easy step-by-step tutorial showing the integration of the StrikeIron US Address Verification Web service into a Java EE Web application utilizing the NetBeans Visual Web Designer. It's simply a drag and drop exercise with a few lines of code to pass the appropriate parameters.
Here is the link to this easy tutorial: http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/websvc/strikeiron.html
StrikeIron's Web Services have been integrated into NetBeans with versions 6.0, 6.1, 6.5, and are also part of the 6.7 release candidates now available at www.netbeans.org and can be used with any kind of application, not just Java EE Web applications.
Now for my favorite part.
The NetBeans team included four StrikeIron Web services within the "Web Services" node of the Services window within the NetBeans IDE. However, they have also integrated the StrikeIron Web Services directory service that enables the metadata of all commercially available StrikeIron Web services to be pulled into the IDE, including service descriptions, informational pages, and WSDL locations, so any StrikeIron Web service can be added to and utilized within the IDE.
You can achieve this by right-clicking on the StrikeIron icon in the Services window and selecting "Find StrikeIron Services." You are provided the ability to use a search term to search the StrikeIron directory for whatever service you are looking for. Once one is discovered and "added", the WSDL is then parsed by the IDE, the script compiled, and the class generated and added to the StrikeIron node of available Web services, all in a few seconds. The Web service can then be dragged onto the Visual Web Designer canvas just as in the example above, creating additional, enhanced functionality to your Web application.
Now that's cool.
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