Your Call to Action

You now know how to work with XML. This may not seem like much, but considering how important XML is to Web services, knowing how to work with XML is essential. Without knowing XML, you can't successfully build many Google Web Services applications. Viewing the XML you receive from Google helps you understand how various requests affect the information flow, which increases the chance that you'll develop efficient applications without a lot of extra effort.

This chapter is a beginning. You need to spend more time working with XML to become truly proficient with it. Make sure you visit at least some of the Web sites listed in this chapter to learn more about XML and related technologies such as SOAP and XSLT. Finally, if you don't have privacy and security policies in place, make sure you create the required documentation now, before something happens. Written policies are the best way to reduce risk. If you do have written policies, make sure you revisit them annually to ensure they still meet requirements of your organization, no matter how big or small.

Chapter 4 is the start of a new section. Rather than spending time looking at various techniques for developing applications and theoretical knowledge you need to implement a Google Web Services application, this section shows you how to perform the task. Chapter 4 presents concepts and techniques that everyone needs to work with Google Web Services. The chapters that follow begin looking at individual language requirements. In sum, Chapter 4 is the first chapter where you begin writing application code.