Axis beginner

[Joe Harrison]

I want to develop applications using Visual Studio .net but use Linux with MySQL and Apache Axis (for web services) on the back-end. Prior to this I have been developing web-based applications using PHP, ColdFusion, and MySQL. I know there is already a great deal of documentation on the internet but I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction. After reading the overview on Axis it appears to be very similar to the .net concept of "compiled on the fly" web services and easy deployment. However, they make a few assumptions, like: the availability of a servlet directory and references to Tomcat. I have never developed with Java and I am not sure what needs to be installed on my Linux box. I think what I need is a list of prerequisites, a checklist of services, daemons and/or applications that need to be installed in order to install and use Apache Axis. Also is there a way to write web services in PHP using Apache Axis? Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.