Professional XML Web Services

Rating:
Summary: A good book for someone who likes detective work
Review: This book is so uselessly organized that it is painful to read. Perhaps my problem is that I bought it for the purpose of doing development, not reading and re-reading. I found the .NET Web Services chapter so useful that, after several attempts to figure some stuff out using it, I went to my Web Services chapter of the Wrox Professional C# book, which was far more useful. The first 57 pages of this book are in a chapter entitled Evolution of Web Services. The book reads like a poor graduate-level text, which means that you would only read it if it were required. This book may appeal to you if you found reading raw API documentation useful and intuitive. I can't imagine that what they are doing here isn't better available for free through online help in .NET. Or elsewhere on the internet. A book like this should result in a lot of demand for classes, because the book itself will make people think they can't figure it out. These people either can't write, or can't organize in a fluid, alive sort of way, or didn't have time to. Either way, this book is a big time waster. Microsoft has some decent walkthroughs. This book offers a lot of useless information, which becomes noise for readers who want to create deliverables. If you want to get up and get going, go elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Web Services book currently available
Review: This is a good intro to various topics related to web services, probably the best one available so far (admittedly a pretty small field at this time). It covers the standards behind the technology and proceeds to practical working examples of how to put web services into use. There is some coverage of projected future technologies, but mostly sticks to systems that are currently available (skipping, for example, Apache Axis). The author-per-chapter approach means the chapters are somewhat independent, so you can select a topic of interest and go right to that chapter, without having to read everything that came before it. On the other hand, it means some material is covered in multiple places in the book.

Rating:
Summary: A pretty good anthology about web services
Review: This is a pretty good anthology about web services, with a number of different topics covered in depth. I like that you can read just a chapter about a subject of interest without having to read the whole book up to that point. At 1000 pages, I wouldn't want to read the whole book from beginning to end anyway. However, it is uneven. There are some good chapters about SOAP, but other chapters, for example, UDDI, are not so good.

Rating:
Summary: Mixed examples, and inaccuracy
Review: This is the first of what promises to be a slew of new books coming out on Web Services. As the first book out I guess it's what you'd expect from a book rushed to press. The examples are frequently flawed. If you're already familiar with most of the technology, or you're willing to read the documentation of the WSTK and various Apache documents along with this book you'll find this book a good primer. However, if you're new don't go for this book. The examples tend to be a mixed jumble flowing from COM, Java, NET and even Perl occasionally with in the same example. If you're planning on using all those technologies (and have them all set up) you might be ok. However, if you just want to build a Java webservice, well this isn't the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: What a rushed job!
Review: Wow! This is yet another example of publishers sacrificing book quality for the desire to get something out to market quickly. I have truly enjoyed reading some Wrox books, e.g., Java Server Programming. For these types of book the "one author per chapter" model works out OK because the topics are independent. In this case, the results are terrible. The text has poor flow. There is lots of repetition because, apparently, the authors have not communicated well. There are many inconsistencies and bugs in the examples. Also, there is hardly a developer out there who needs to build web services on .NET and J2EE and using C++, Perl and Python. Pick a platform and focus. Teach me something real. For example, the book talks about the Apache SOAP engine. Well, anyone familiar with the Apache web service efforts knows that Apache SOAP is deprecated in favor of Apache Axis (their next gen web service engine). I'm hoping that "Building Web Services with Java" (still not out) is going to do the right for me but I'm not optimistic. Please, someone write a good book on web services that combines theory and practice in a single easy to read package.