Java - JAXRS have you used it?

Hi Guys

I've been tasked with creating a new app for the company I work for and I am struggling at the first hurdle as I have almost no server side coding experience. I am confident with both JAVA and the android SDK so this is no problem only time consuming. We have at work our own web server which I use in other apps to reference/download files directly (no security needed), but i'm struggling when I need that extra layer with an API so as not to expose the database to the client (and indeed the world).

I need to create a database that I can edit through a CMS (no problem here, I can create a java application). I'm am struggling however with how I could then expose this database to the web through an API of some kind. I did research ASP.NET but having little experience with C# and Visual Studio I decided against this. I came across JAX-RS which can be used to create a RESTful application using Java.

Now the JAX-RS looks a little awkward to get started with, not so much the coding but how do I deploy/host this on the web server (I thought this would be the easiest bit, I assumed I could simply drop the .jar/.exe on the server thus creating a URL and hey presto). I get a little lost when it come to packaging as a .war in a .ear and nowhere have I found anything which details how to deploy to your own web server as i'm kind of in a unique situation compared to most.

I realise this is quite specialised but any help would be appreciated especially if you can point to any tutorials/code examples. Again i'm confident I can get my head around creating the API with a bit of research but I don't know how I would host this to try it out and check my code through a URL.

Thanks Daniel