Hi,
Its really interesting to hear you say that, I actually had to make a similar decision last year when I started my final year dissertation for uni. Luckily my supervisor was as keen on Perl as I was, so didn't take much convincing! :-)

For my final year project I designed a web robot, using the LWP library of Perl modules, check it out here if you are interested: Nebukadnezar Project. It's pretty cool and I managed to get 85% for it! :-)

I'm not sure what you've decided to do, but the main advantages and reasons I quoted for using Perl were:

• regular expressions. - This is something it (at least used to) kick java's ass at ;-).
• Perl is widely regarded as pretty fast and simple and excellent for creating simple web based applications. - Java is slow, strict and laborious (at least in my opinion).
• There is also a very wide community of help with Perl, I posted lots of message on this site about my project and got lots of help! (i'm not saying there isn't any help out there for java... the might be... I just don't know...)

The most important thing is that you pick the tool that is best for the job, Also if you know how to program in Perl this is another good reason to choose it over Java. You need to think about the time it would take to learn another language.

Anyway I hope that's some help, it really depends what kind of web service you are going to write as well I think? Although I guess the most important thing is to take the advice of your supervisor, after all it's them who will be marking it!

Good luck with the project!

Cheers,
Tom

By the way, thanks to all those people that helped out on my project last year! It was much appreciated and the reason I ended up with a 2:1 :-)