The home page for Amazon Web Services (AWS) is www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=3435361 [1]. From that page, you can register for an ID, download and read documentation (including code examples in a variety of languages) and participate in forums for AWS developers. A frequently updated Weblog with news and ideas about AWS is at aws.typepad.com [2].

All of Amazon's Web services can be accessed using either SOAP or REST. An overall introduction to SOAP, including XML examples, is at www.intertwingly.net/stories/2002/03/16/aGentleIntroductionToSoap.html [3].

An established Perl library for SOAP, known as SOAP::Lite, is available from CPAN and described (with extensive documentation) at www.soaplite.com [4]. A similar tutorial for using SOAP from Python is at www.diveintopython.org/soap_web_services [5].