Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy this book!
Review: The other reviews saying "Repetitve and shallow content" are all 100% true.
It repeats itself over and over again. Is not only boring but it's also extremely hard to follow.
I'm an experienced java/jsp developer trying to get into web services, and this book only gave me frustration and disapointment.
When I started reading this book I thought that WS technologies were very complex and hard to understand. Then I realized the only thing hard to understand is this book.
I'm taking this book back to the store.
Rating: 
Summary: A developer's reference
Review: The real differentiator of this book is that its focus on how to build Web services from Java and J2EE to solve real-world problems, rather than reproducing the Web services specifications and tutorials itself. As such, it's a much more pragmatic approach to building Web services using popular web services implementations (like Weblogic, Axis and Sun JWSDP) than the other books I've read on the subject. The author starts by taking high-level perspective along with real hands-on examples on the Web services and its building blocks, building web services architecture showing the different design considerations that need to be applied when choosing which
J2EE technologies to use. A case study (ACME Web services) is described and elaborated at Chapter 11 of the book, showing how can you build a complete Web services solution putting together with JAX APIs (This is missing in other Java web services books). The book also provides a load of examples, which I found useful for my projects. Overall, the book serves well for a Java programmer who wish to build Web services solutions, not just understand the technology.
Rating:
Summary: Demystifying Java Web services
Review: There is a lot of hype these days about Web services and using Java Web services, there is also a lot of FUD. I'd been in the fear camp for a while. I tried using diffrent Web services vendors with vendor specific APIs before, but didn't quite understand what was going on. I'd heard differing descriptions of Web services vendors API architecture, and horror stories about performance. This book takes the mystery out of Web services, it clearly lays out the learning path from state of the industry, vendor implementations and emerging standard APIs. This book lays a solid foundation by playing with examples of Web services aND discussing Web services building blocks with ready-to-use examples. The authors are very clever presenting this book to addressing the popular vendor implementations (BEA Weblogic, Apache Axis, Systinet, IBM WSDK, Microsoft .NET) and then anchoring on the new Sun Web services Pack (JWSDP) with JAX APIs (JAX-RPC, JAXM, SAAJ, JAXP, JAXB). This book is a very promising hands-on guide for those want to take a swim on code and wish to demostrate web services. It delivers a step-by-step instructions guide on how-to implement Web services Architecture from J2EE components, how to build security and how to create Java WS Interoperability with .NET. I highly recommend this book for the Java developers who wish to make their hands wet with Java Web services.
Rating:
Summary: Good Web services case study and examples
Review: This book did a great job explaining to me not only *what* is Web services is and *why* I should use it but also *how* to build it using Weblogic and Axis. This is something I found lacking in the other books. I found the JAXRPC, JAXB, JAXR, SAAJ and JAXM chapters and the case study showing how to make all these API together working in a real web services is "very helpful" for a developer like me. In short: A great book on Java web services,in a style of writing that a developer understands and also making it as a fun read.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding book on Java Web services
Review: This book has exceeded all my expectations by far in Java Web services. This promising book explains the Web services architecture and its core concepts from beginning to end with solid examples. The content and examples are outstanding and the book flow is "paced" perfectly. I felt like I had strong grasp of each concept at the end of each chapter which makes it a nice learning tool, and a good reference for obtaining cut-and-paste sample code for variety of scenarios. This is the only Java Web services book that illustrates a full-featured Web services case study example which demonstrates all core components (SOAP, WSDL and UDDI) working together. This makes a perfect ready-to-use example in a real-world project. This book teaches how to use the core Java Web services APIs (JAX-RPC, JAXM, SAAJ, JAXP, JAXB) in depth with examples and plus more it also illustrates how to build Web services using BEA Weblogic, Apache Axis, CASTOR and IBM Web services Security kit in Web services. In addition to the full-featured Web services architecture case-study using JAX APIs, there are 3 ready-to-use projects, which demonstrates:
- How to build Web services from existing J2EE components.
- How to create Java Web services Interoperability using Microsoft .NET.
- How to build security for Java Web services using IBM security kit. The end result, you will find this book as a solid text on Java Web services today that provides excellent hands-on examples for Web services architecture in a remarkably readable and in a very engaging developer perspective.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Job!
Review: This book is a great tool for developing web services for Java users. The authors presumed that their readers has the basic conceptual and programming knowledge of implementing Web applications using Java and XML. A book for all Web services enthusiasts, architects, and developers who perceive Java as their platform of choice for Web services development and deployment. Developing Java Web Services is organized into five parts, with exclusive chapters concentrating on the Web services technologies. Part One introduces the reader to Web services by taking an evolutionary journey of distributed computing and the emergence of Web services, and then it devotes an exclusive overview on Web services, addressing its motivation, characteristics, industry standards and technologies, strategies and solutions, and its benefits and limitations; Part Two walks through the different Web services standards and technologies such as SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI with real-world examples; Part Three exclusively focuses on Java APIs for Web services: JAXP, JAXB, JAXM, JAX-RPC, and JAX-R, and their reference implemetation on JWSDP; Part Four covers Web services security concepts and various security standards and technologies; and lastly, Part Five introduces the reader to the Sun ONE initiative and provides information on Sun ONE tools and platform servers for implementing Web services. Let me borrow Simon Phipps' foreword on this book, "this book is a great tool for your springboard to the future of how to make the Net work." Simon Phipps is Chief Technology Evangelist at Sun Microsystems, Nagappan and Skoczykas are both Enterprise Java Architects at sun Java Center, and Sriganesh is a Technology Evangelist at Sun Microsystems.
Rating:
Summary: QuickJumpstart book on Java web services
Review: This book is a straightforward text, which Web services beginners and intermediates should enjoy learning from. Everything about this book is simplified with examples. Anybody who has a vague understanding of Java and XML can cope comfortably with it. It is that reader-friendly and demonstrates a quite a lot of examples using Sun JWS, Weblogic, Axis, Microsoft.NET, IBM Security kit.
This is a fine, smooth-sailing, example based web services book; only that it has very little to offer advanced webservices developers.
Rating: 
Summary: A decent intro to web services
Review: This book is okay as a starting-point in learning Java web services. It attempts to cover a wide range of topics but fails to expand on some subtleties crucial to the understanding of these topics. One obvious example of this is the distinction between document-literal binding style and document-based web services. The book touchs on both concepts but stops right there without any explanations on how these concepts are related or not related, what are the implications of choosing a binding-style from the perspective of a web services developer or an admin, whether the choice of a binding-style determines the programming model, the API set, etc.
The authors tend to be loose from time to time with their use of terminologies and concepts. Admittedly, part of this is due to the state of the art of web services itself. That being said, some of the comments in the book are quite confusing and misleading. One example is found on page 454 of the book "JAX-RPC is also a best-fit solution over JAXM ... where high performance ... are defined as the key requirements." This is simply contrary to the common wisdom that loosely-coupled messaging applications usually out-perform their tightly-coupled RPC style counterparts when "performance" is defined as the system throughput. RPC style apps may offer a more predictable response time at the cost of inferior throughput. However, this point was never expanded on with any further information. Similar comments can be found throughout the book.
The writing style of the book is quite verbose and repetitive. Quite often the same point can be found twice or more in one paragraph.
With its shortcomings, the book is still a decent introduction to web services. However, I would recommend supplementing with other online sources. There are many wonderful technical articals on SUN's blueprint site, IBM and Oracle's developer communities.
Rating:
Summary: How things are supposed to work
Review: This book is provides a comprehensive overview of creating web services with Java. The first part composed of two chapters is an introduction to web services. It portrays web services as the natural progression of distributed computing. The second part covers architecture and technologies like SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI, as well as interoperability with .Net. The third part includes important Java APIs for XML (like JAXB, JAXP, etc.) and the Java Web Services Developer Pack. The fourth part covers web services security. The fifth part is basically an introduction to the Sun Net Open Environment (Sun ONE). For the most part each topic has sufficient depth, but for instructional purposes a somewhat different organization (i.e. progressive concept building) would make it an easier read, but perhaps less valuable as a reference. The book contains numerous code examples and diagrams that depict how things are supposed to work. A couple of interesting pieces are the Case Study using JWSDP from Sun and the Further Reading appendix. Since JWSDP is a free download from Sun, it is a good way to experiment with web services without a large investment. The further reading idea is a good one that is not used frequently enough. Some books have a bibliography, but where do you go to further your knowledge? Overall, I felt that the book was repetitious and wordy. However, it covers many topics that are important to success in Java Web Services. There is so much repetition that a reader could probably just drop into a chapter on a topic of interest and begin reading. While many developers focus on how their particular vendor delivers web services, if you want to know how the technologies are supposed to work together, this book is a good resource, but you may not want to start here. At 700+ pages, this volume could be quite daunting.
Rating:
Summary: Repetitve and shallow content
Review: This book is too repetitive and verbose. Pretty much everything is repeated over and over again. When you repeat something over and over again, it becomes painful to read and comprehend. Repetition also increases the number of pages. May be the publishers feel they are providing value to readers by giving them a thick fat repetitive book? When you repeat something repeatedly, you lose the gist of what the person is trying to convey. Repetition makes the discussion verbose. I don't particularly find verbosity and redundancy as positive qualities of a book. The authors also have not scoped the topics to cover well. They are all over the place trying to touch upon in little depth a wide range of topics. That allows them to repeat themselves even more. Or you could have just read the title of my review. ;-)
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