J2EE Platform Web Services

Rating:
Summary: atrocious code
Review: Have a look at the code snippet on pages 138-139. It's terrible. I've let go of a couple of coders over the years on the basis of their poor coding practices, and this reminds me of their stuff. Yeah, I know... the thrust of the book is big-picture high-level architecture, so nit-picking on coding style may be missing the point, but in the design and architecture area as well, I'm seeing impressive-looking diagrams and hifalutin claims of superior insights that, on closer examination, reveal a disorganized and indiscrimate jumble. Right now, I'm inclined to return the book. This book might impress your managers, but it shouldn't impress you.

Rating:
Summary: J2EE Platform Web Services
Review: The book is excellent. It provides an in-depth study of web services technologies. While reading your book, I gain a lot of knowledge in the area of web services. The book is truly an invaluable resource for the design and implementation of the technologies.

Rating:
Summary: J2EE Platform Web Services
Review: The book is excellent. It provides an in-depth study of web services technologies. While reading your book, I gain a lot of knowledge in the area of web services. The book is truly an invaluable resource for the design and implementation of the technologies.

Rating:
Summary: Solid guidance on webservices for architects and managers.
Review: This book is clearly written text for the enterprise architects and business managers who wants to learn the many key business and technical aspects of real-world Web services... exploring right from how to make a web services business case TO how to overcome the stumbling technical challenges involved in Web services. This is the only book available today which uncovers those complexities and guides a Web services architect with possible best practice strategies and reference architecture solutions.

The book is titled with "J2EE Platform Web services"... for a short-sighted programmer this means that as a simple tutorial for a Web services beginner using J2EE 1.4. It is not true in this book ! This book tends to use the Sun's J2EE architectural vision for realworld web services by blending Web services with J2EE based architecture capabilities like Scalability, Reliability, Security, Manageability and so on. The author clearly sets the realworld webservices architectural expectations and drills down to show..how to make it work.

The book starts with a brief introduction to Web services and its enabling technologies...then dives deep into complex web services scenarios in the real world business scenarios...(THAT'S WHY I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO ARCHITECTS). It drives in to variety of Web services architecture models from simple Web services based legacy integration TO Mainframe based application interoprability. The author Mr.Lai brings the hidden complexities to the limelight and explores possible solutions to those complex scenarios with architectural design patterns and best practices. The author proves them by walking through a bunch of reference architecture examples and case studies.

The author did an excellent job in illustrating those architectural patterns - In a patterns language and vocabulary - And demonstrates the pattern usage with usecases, applicability combinations or motifs, pattern frameworks, reusability, interoperability strategies etc.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I strongly recommend this book to enterprise architects and business managers who wish to explore web services. I am sure, this book will prove to be an invaluable reference.

Rating:
Summary: Solid guidance on webservices for architects and managers.
Review: This book is clearly written text for the enterprise architects and business managers who wants to learn the many key business and technical aspects of real-world Web services... exploring right from how to make a web services business case TO how to overcome the stumbling technical challenges involved in Web services. This is the only book available today which uncovers those complexities and guides a Web services architect with possible best practice strategies and reference architecture solutions.

The book is titled with "J2EE Platform Web services"... for a short-sighted programmer this means that as a simple tutorial for a Web services beginner using J2EE 1.4. It is not true in this book ! This book tends to use the Sun's J2EE architectural vision for realworld web services by blending Web services with J2EE based architecture capabilities like Scalability, Reliability, Security, Manageability and so on. The author clearly sets the realworld webservices architectural expectations and drills down to show..how to make it work.

The book starts with a brief introduction to Web services and its enabling technologies...then dives deep into complex web services scenarios in the real world business scenarios...(THAT'S WHY I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO ARCHITECTS). It drives in to variety of Web services architecture models from simple Web services based legacy integration TO Mainframe based application interoprability. The author Mr.Lai brings the hidden complexities to the limelight and explores possible solutions to those complex scenarios with architectural design patterns and best practices. The author proves them by walking through a bunch of reference architecture examples and case studies.

The author did an excellent job in illustrating those architectural patterns - In a patterns language and vocabulary - And demonstrates the pattern usage with usecases, applicability combinations or motifs, pattern frameworks, reusability, interoperability strategies etc.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I strongly recommend this book to enterprise architects and business managers who wish to explore web services. I am sure, this book will prove to be an invaluable reference.

Rating:
Summary: Didn't give me any clue on how to build web services on J2EE
Review: This book is not very useful for the average designer who wants to implement web services on a J2EE platform. It is more for managers and high level architects. It spends alot of pages on topics like business cases and ebXML, but JAX-RPC is covered in one single page. It does not focus on the core technologies you need to build a web service on a J2EE platform. The WS-I basic profile is hardly mentioned.
If you are a programmer/designer/architect you should have a look at the book "J2EE Web Services" by Richard Monson-Haefel instead.

Rating:
Summary: A good reference book
Review: This is clearly not a how-to book for the programmer tasked with the creation of a simple web service that needs to be up within a couple days. There are no long pages of code reprints or on-liner "Hello-world". No, this book is better seen as a concentrate of experience from people involved in designing large scale enterprise class services. Reading this book is akin to peeking into their notes at the end of the project: business cases, use cases, technology overviews and systems diagrams are the type of material the author has assembled.

The book covers Web Services from the perspective of Sun's architecture, tools and technologies in a vendor neutral fashion. Considering the title, this should not be a surprise for anyone. After a review of the notion of services as well as the enabling technologies (XML, UDDI, SOAP, WSDL, ebXML, Service Registries), the author describes some best practices and reference designs that were successful on some large scale projects mixing services, legacy systems and the internet.

The book will particularly appeal to the managers who want to understand why web services should be on their radar screens, and the architects who will design the solutions. I particularly enjoyed the diagrams which give a very good high level view of the problems at hand, as well as list of references at the end of each section. These are usually a good addition to the book's content for people wanting to dig deeper. Altogether this is the type of book I like, where the author clearly exposes the forces and risks of each proposed solution.

Rating:
Summary: A good reference book
Review: This is clearly not a how-to book for the programmer tasked with the creation of a simple web service that needs to be up within a couple days. There are no long pages of code reprints or on-liner "Hello-world". No, this book is better seen as a concentrate of experience from people involved in designing large scale enterprise class services. Reading this book is akin to peeking into their notes at the end of the project: business cases, use cases, technology overviews and systems diagrams are the type of material the author has assembled.

The book covers Web Services from the perspective of Sun's architecture, tools and technologies in a vendor neutral fashion. Considering the title, this should not be a surprise for anyone. After a review of the notion of services as well as the enabling technologies (XML, UDDI, SOAP, WSDL, ebXML, Service Registries), the author describes some best practices and reference designs that were successful on some large scale projects mixing services, legacy systems and the internet.

The book will particularly appeal to the managers who want to understand why web services should be on their radar screens, and the architects who will design the solutions. I particularly enjoyed the diagrams which give a very good high level view of the problems at hand, as well as list of references at the end of each section. These are usually a good addition to the book's content for people wanting to dig deeper. Altogether this is the type of book I like, where the author clearly exposes the forces and risks of each proposed solution.

Rating:
Summary: Web Services Seem to Be Jelling Around J2EE
Review: Web Services are such an amalgam of hype and an alphabet soup of standards. But, just maybe, things seem to be firming up around a J2EE approach. And this is not just the opinion of the author and Sun, who commissioned this book, but also of IBM and other major computer players, with the notable exception, of course, of Microsoft.

The book is up to date and seems reasonably balanced. There is certainly a definite emphasis on Sun's approaches. But usually, if there is a competing product from IBM or Microsoft, then it is respectfully described. Actually, where there are comparisons made, they tend to be objective and do not actually claim that Sun's is the best. Such comparisons are done dispassionately. You are not reading a de facto product of Sun's sales department, which may be an unstated but real concern of yours.

The main reason for Sun's push into Web Services is that it is hoped to be an area of high growth and margins. Sun has to move off the low ground of vanilla operating systems capabilities. Because while it can hold its own against Microsoft in large servers, linux is free and easy to use at the low end. The book scarcely mentions linux. Perhaps partly because linux is the closest immediate danger. But probably also because there is little current overlap between linux and Web Services.

Curiously, the book omits any mention of jBoss. This is free code that competes with Web containers like Websphere. Its proponents claim it has a significant future in WS. Apparently, Sun totally disagrees.

Rating:
Summary: Web Services Seem to Be Jelling Around J2EE
Review: Web Services are such an amalgam of hype and an alphabet soup of standards. But, just maybe, things seem to be firming up around a J2EE approach. And this is not just the opinion of the author and Sun, who commissioned this book, but also of IBM and other major computer players, with the notable exception, of course, of Microsoft.

The book is up to date and seems reasonably balanced. There is certainly a definite emphasis on Sun's approaches. But usually, if there is a competing product from IBM or Microsoft, then it is respectfully described. Actually, where there are comparisons made, they tend to be objective and do not actually claim that Sun's is the best. Such comparisons are done dispassionately. You are not reading a de facto product of Sun's sales department, which may be an unstated but real concern of yours.

The main reason for Sun's push into Web Services is that it is hoped to be an area of high growth and margins. Sun has to move off the low ground of vanilla operating systems capabilities. Because while it can hold its own against Microsoft in large servers, linux is free and easy to use at the low end. The book scarcely mentions linux. Perhaps partly because linux is the closest immediate danger. But probably also because there is little current overlap between linux and Web Services.

Curiously, the book omits any mention of jBoss. This is free code that competes with Web containers like Websphere. Its proponents claim it has a significant future in WS. Apparently, Sun totally disagrees.