Servlet JSON response

I'm just asking for the sake of clarity, but if a servlet returns a varying JSON response, does that make it a web service?

Ex: http://somehost/xyzservlet?param1=foo&param2=bar

Varying param1 and param2 can yield different JSON responses. Is this considered a "web service"?

I guess that greatly depends upon how you define "web service"?

I'll move this over to the web services forum for any further discussion.

For what it's worth, a large number of the servlets in my current project return JSON, as the app is heavily Ajax-ified. I do not consider these servlets part of any "web service".

(We do have a RESTful web service for the system -- but it's XML-based.)

Just curious to see what people thought.

Do most people create their own process for converting Java HashMap Objects to JSON or do they use existing code such as: www.json.org/java ?

Hi!
Personally, I have always used different kinds of libraries to help me with marshalling and unmarshalling JSON data. My favourite library is Jackson: http://jackson.codehaus.org/
Best wishes!

Is this considered a "web service"?

http://api.search.yahoo.com/WebSearchService/V1/webSearch?appid=YahooDemo&query=Phoenix%20Arizonat&results=10

It returns XML. My idea of a servlet returning a JSON string is not much different.

I use Google's gson library for JSON conversions.

google's gson worked the first time I passed a plain old Java object.