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Summary: SOA for the Enterprise
Review: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an emerging technology. But it has not yet fully emerged out of the academic and research-labs closets. The book under review is the first accessible introduction to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web services.The book is directed towards managers, planners, and architects who may be in a state of FUDS (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubts, and Shock) at being suddenly confronted with a new paradigm. According to the authors (and many other industry experts) SOA is going to change the way we develop and use software. This has implications for every aspect of an IT-professional's life - social, psychological, and technical. The author addresses all these issues very well and does succeed in reducing the FUDS factor considerably. The basic tenent of SOA is that at long last we should be able to develop and use software just as we develop and use hardware, namely, develop packaged and fully functional components and assemble them together just as we would do for hardware components of TV, stereo and so forth. This has always been the goal (the holy grail) of software but with hindsight we can say that objects, EJBs, and frameworks have been only steps in the right direction rather than "mission-accomplished". The missing piece in the puzzle had been a concrete and universally accepted implementation of SOA. Web Services is this long-awaited implementation, which would usher in the era of packaged and pluggable software. The integration mechanism of Web Services is expressed by the now famous triangle: publish-find-bind. In short, a sevice publishes itself in a UDDI directory (yellow pages), another service which needs this service looks up its "address" in the yellow-pages (find), and then contacts it directly (bind). The publish-find-bind triangle of SOA predates modern science. Since time immemorial, arranged marriages have been executed using this mechanism. Thus this triangle should rightfully be called " the holy matrimonial triangle".
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Summary: Top book at Java One
Review: I picked up this book Java One and it was one of the better books on web services at the conference. I recommend it to everyone.
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Summary: Building block for distributed systems
Review: This is clearly the book for architects and is not entry level. Any thoughts that a general audience would read this title are shattered by the end of chapter 2. A working knowledge of both Java and XML are a prerequisite. That said, I recommend this book for developers who quickly want to get rolling with web services. The authors waste no time in diving right in and giving developers the tools and hands-on experience that they crave. The book has good code examples and even screen snaps! Altogether, this book is a great way for developers to learn about web services.
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Summary: Homerun but should be priced cheaper
Review: This is the absolutely best book on web services on Amazon.com. This book costs more than books of a similar page count and topic. I have seen on other sites other competitive books discounted by 45%. I think the book would sell more copies to those interested in this subject if the price were dropped by another $10 or $15. Other than price, it is a winner. If the price were lower then I would have given it all 5 stars...
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Summary: This book is pragmatic and practical
Review: I took the suggestion of another reviewer here and purchased a total ten copies from various online booksellers and distributed it to my direct reports so that they could develop a comprehensive understanding of how Web Services will work for solving IT issues we have been experiencing and to gain advantage over our competitors. Coming from a non-technical background, I still felt that it added a lot of value to my understanding as to where we should be headed as an organization. This book does well in explaining concepts that I wouldn't have otherwise known about. The chapters on service oriented architectures, components and security considerations was an eye opener. Didn't personally read the other chapters since I do not develop software but my staff tells me they are good as well. Organizations that are serious about web services would do well to buy this book for all members of their project team.
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Summary: You should already own this book!
Review: This is the most up-to-date book on web services being published today. Unlike other books written to earlier specifications, this one has extensive coverage of SOAP 1.2, WSDL 1.2, UDDI 3.0. It even does a great job of covering specifications such as the Liberty Alliance, PingID and others. This book is a great value and will save you a lot of headaches down the road. Buy one for your coworker as well.
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Summary: I wish I'd wrote this book
Review: Awhile back, I was brainstorming the idea of writing a book on Web Services and had an idea similar to this book. I am glad that my peers in the industry have the opportunity to read such a fine work. The authors did a great job of explaining architectural principles behind web services. Many people in the industry only learn about web services due to hype put out by vendors such as BEA and the Workshop tool (Really should use Eclipse instead) and learn how to generate bad code faster. This book provides much needed guidance on how to get it right the first time. Do not buy this book if you are one of those in the industry that still hasnt figured out that 90% of the cost of software is in the maintenance stage.
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Summary: This is a really good book
Review: I was suprised that a book published by Morgan Kaufman would be of such high quality and on a interesting topic until I saw this book in the bookstore. I was pleasantly suprised. Normally their books are overpriced relative to other publishers on the same topic. Anywho, this book does justice to explain what one needs to understand about web services. It is targeted towards developers and architects but has some interesting concepts that are also applicable to project managers. They do a great job of explaining Service Oriented Architectures and how they are the foundation of web services. This book should be on everyone's shelf.
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Summary: Loosely Coupled
Review: The vast majority of books written are either for managers or technologists but not usually both. This book manages to pull off the goal of making it easy to understand architecting loosely coupled web services. This book cuts through the hype by presenting both the advantages and disadvantages of this technology. It seems that nearly every hardware and software vendor is touting a web services strategy. Technology presented in this book is vendor-neutral. If you are planning a web services project, you should read this book thoroughly. If you only want a basic introduction to Web Services, just read the first three chapters. If you already feel comfortable with the basics and you want specific information, you can read selective chapters. Books such as these are bound to become classics and should be on every technologist's bookshelf.
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Summary: This book is a classic
Review: This book is both thoughtful and thought provoking. It does to Web Services what the gang-of-four classic did to object-level design patterns and provides a catalogue of all of the technologies that are used in a comprehensive web services architecture. This book is also more than just a catalogue. It is as much about the subtle paradigm shifts taking place in the post-dotcom era. Every programmer from the dotcom era knows about n-tier architecture - a bunch of squares representing tiers connected by lines representing communication between tiers. Web services introduce a new architecture called service-oriented architecture. One thing to notice is that web services architecture is about communication and how servers publicize themselves and their products in yellow-pages and how clients here about these services and products from the yellow pages. This book describes how services are registered / published in registries so they can be found and also dives into how to secure them and make them highly available. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about doing it right the first time.
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