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Developing app with web and Android client with Java

I'm going to start developing a new simple "X management" kind app, like contact management or events management. What I want to know is which tools would be the best to achieve it in the way I want.
My app needs to be a web app running on a server that has a mysql database to save and retrieve some simple information. This app must have a web client but I want it to be able to be extended to work with an Android app client.
Things I've thought:
I've worked on Java with facelets and JPA travels management app running on a GlassFish server on localhost with a JSF web view, so maybe my web client and the full app could be done with this.
I've worked with web services such as SOAP and REST with Jaxb and xml schemes to retrieve information parsing some webs into xml or json to show on a client .net app. So I've thought I can add to my app, like last topic we talked about, a REST web service layer to easily work as I want, or at least I think it would be easy. If I do this the Android app could share the same app core code but using the REST service.
My question is what could be the best way to do an app with 2 client side in different platforms that could share some code to be easy to extend it moreover to a desktop app. I've talked about these 2 options because I'm a students of computers at university and those are the tools I know, but I can easy learn more. I've also think about just a REST service and create a web and an Android client to work on same service or something like that.
This post is getting long, so here is the summary: What technologies and tools do you think are the best choice to create an java web app that needs to have web and Android client? Also what server, like tomcat, GlassFish or another, should I use? And what about persistence layer? JPA with mysql is the best I know to work with.
Thanks a lot.
P.D: I work with eclipse

From my point of view:
You can use java jersey and java spring both ( java spring as Dependency injection) for creating RESTful Web service. So, In server side you will create endpoint and you can access data from any platform through those endpoint.
Server can be anyone. It's up to you. I always try to use tomcat but tomcat is not a full JavaEE container it's only a servlet container. So if you want to use full JavaEE version then you should use Glassfish.
And yes JPA .It can be easily used in any environment supporting JPA including Java SE applications, Java EE application servers, Enterprise OSGi containers etc.
On the other hand, still choice is yours.

CXF and standalone web services

I'm currently writing a few applications that contain web service clients and servers, as complete standalone applications, eg without any web application server / servlet engine. I'm using plain Java 6, and for the "server" part I'm using the sun HttpServer. Working like a charm.
(actually I am using CXF, but only for their wsdl2java tool, which is more flexible than the one that ships with Java 6).
I've been wondering now if there is any benefit for me to look at frameworks like CXF. Strangely enough, I can't find any information on the CXF web site on such a scenario, they just seem to blindly assume that everybody uses an applications server (and worse, maven).
One of the reasons why I'm looking at CXF is that in the near future I expect that I need to support AIX as well, and there I can't use:
reqcontext.put(BindingProviderProperties.CONNECT_TIMEOUT, connect_timeout);
reqcontext.put(BindingProviderProperties.REQUEST_TIMEOUT, request_timeout);
CXF has this thing called an HTTPClientPolicy which would nicely fit the bill.
Does anybody have any links to articles discussing using CXF without any application server / servlet engine? Are there any other benefits that CXF could give me over the current Java 6 JAX-WS implementation?
Maarten

Almost all the samples that come in the CXF distribution are setup specifically as a "main method" type service that starts up the service and clients and such as standalone applications without any use of an app server (or even Tomcat). The CXF samples would be a good place to start.
That said, they do all use Maven now. :-)

REST ful java web service on heroku?

how to write java REST Web service and Deploy it on heroku? Till now I just worked on simple java application on heroku, first time I am trying to deploy a web service.

Spring MVC's REST support is one option that is pretty easy to use. Or you can use Play Framework's REST support. Or there are many other options. They should virtually all run on Heroku so try a few and see what works for you.

Here's an example of a JAX-RS REST service, complete with Procfile and README for deploying to Heroku (not much to do).
https://github.com/jesperfj/jax-rs-upload-file
It uses Grizzly as embedded server and is super lightweight. Let me know what path you decide to take. Curious about what works best for you.

Need a java webservice tutorial and how to make a web service secure

I have a web service that is using:
Java (familiar)
SOAP (new to me)
JBOSS (new to me)
The web service is currently unsecure. My task is to make it secure using https (ssl or tsl).
I am new to web services and web things in general. In the last week have gone through a tone of literature. Much of it which I think was not relevant to my project. I think that I need two things:
A pretty basic tutorial on web services (java specific)
A tutorial on making web services secured
Here are some of the tutorials I have gone through already:
SO Answer - In-process SOAP service server for Java
How to make a web service server.
Does not have instructions for the client.
Also does not specify what should happen so I am not certain that I got the propper result when navigating to the URL.
An Introductory Tutorial on Web Services, Java and XML
Pretty good description of lots of xml things and how messages are passed. Not certain but this seems more low level than what I need
Three Minutes to a Web Service
Good tutorial but in the second step one of the commands did not work.
I think that this may be because the tutorial is really old and maybe my jdk is differnt or something like that..

You can check out these frameworks
Apache axis
Apache cxf

The web service is currently unsecure. My task is to make it secure using https (ssl or tsl).
If it's just about (one-way) SSL, then this question doesn't have much to do with web services actually. It's more a web server or app server configuration issue. For JBoss, see SSLSetup or, if you are using Apache for the SSL encryption, see Apache SSL/TLS Encryption.

I would guess that you need to look at JBoss's documentation for how they handle security. Maybe this would help:
Chapter 8. Security on JBoss

java: basic web service interface without a web server

how hard is adding a basic web services interface to an existing java server application without having to turn it into a .war, or embedding a small web server like jetty?
say, xml-rpc instead of more modern approaches, if it helps.
if not too hard, can you suggest a starting point?
thank you in advance :)

It sounds like you're asking for the impossible: expose an HTTP service without plugging into or embedding an HTTP server!
Unless you want to reimplement what Jetty already does, I'd reccommend using Jetty as a library. That way you don't need to conform to the more awkward aspects of the Servlet spec. E.g. your servlets can have real constructors with parameters.
There is also a simple HTTP server implementation in JDK 6, but it's in the com.sun namespace so I'd avoid it for production code.

Check out the Restlet API which provides a painless way to implement RESTful web services that can run inside a web container or standalone.

I don't know what you are doing, but what about rmi?
RMI # stackoverflow

Spring-WS has the facility for using JRE 1.6's embedded web server, if that's an option for you. Spring-WS gives you a very nice SOAP server layer, if that's what you're after.
If not, then an embedded Jetty instance is probably the best idea.