title: What tech to use to build a very basic hotel booking type web-app?
body: <p>I'm a newbie.  :( <br>
  I've taken about 4 Java courses and written some simple apps.  As part of a class, I wrote a order purchasing application with JDBC  and JSP pages/servlets.  The bummer about all this is that there wasn't much info in the class on using eclipse &amp; such and it seems there are more efficient and modern ways of doing this now.</p>
  
  <p>I want to keep learning and since my ski club has a need to streamline it's booking process (currently email), I thought I would see if I could write an application to do this.   I think the right way to do this would be to write something that could support a webservices type interface, so I could eventually (maybe I'm getting ahead of myself) write a mobile app as well.   I'm getting a bit confused by all the choices out there though as I don't understand well how the different layers fit together and what the best place is to start.   So, to summarize: <br>
  1) Beginner level Java - would like to continue using it.<br>
  2) Want to build a simple hotel booking type app.<br>
  3) Would like a webservices (SOAP?) like interface to the front end<br>
  4) Open-source tools
  FWIW: I'll be doing this on a macbook but could also do a linux VM.  I also have my own hosted domain and mysql db I could setup there for testing.</p>
  
  <p>I'd like it if someone could recommend an approach for me.  Perhaps some tutorials or an online class that would get me closer to getting started?  Pretend you are me.  :) <br>
  Thanks!</p>