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Java Web Services in a Nutshell
I expected this book to be similar to other "Nutshell" books that I like and am familiar with: a very accurate and concise description of the domain, followed by a huge API reference. Well, I was pleasantly surprised: this book reads more like a tutorial, yet it is a reference in the sense that you can easily read its parts independently, and its index is quite useful and complete.
The book covers all technologies necessary for defining, implementing, and deploying Web Services for both client and server sides:
- WSDL (Web Services Definition Language), the XML-based interface definition language (and more); CORBA folks: this is your IDL for the Web Services platform, only not as easily read or understood. Not to worry: there are GUI-based editors for this thing, many of them are free. Plus the book explains WSDL format and structure in a great detail.
- JAXR, a client-side interface for extraction of business and service information from the compliant Web Service registries.
- JAX-RPC (two chapters: basic and advanced); at the application level this technology is similar to CORBA using Java.
- JAXM, a high level standard-based generic interface to messaging that is implemented by a messaging provider. It offers the benefits of asynchronous messaging, robust message delivery, and message profiles (use of SOAP message headers).
- SAAJ is a low-level Java interface to SOAP; under the hood some of the mentioned technologies use it.
For each of these technologies the author dedicates enormous effort to showing intricate but very relevant technical details without obscuring the big picture. There is a necessary but not overwhelming amount of Java code and XML. You will be able to reuse the examples since they are very clear.
The book has a chapter on Web Services tools and configuration files. This is a very helpful chapter: the business of defining deployment descriptors by hand is a messy job; presence of this chapter makes the job a bit easier. A small but helpful API reference may be found at the end of the volume.
If you need to understand the details of how to build, implement, and deploy Web Services, you will not be disappointed. There is absolutely no hype in this book! Considering the topic, nowadays this alone is an achievement.
Web Services technology is not the "Web Stuff," it is not related to browsing the WWW, and it does not pertain to the services offered by the WWW vendors (unless Web Services is what they sell). It is a fast-growing technology for programming in the distributed computing environment. Judging by the hype and money being spent on it by the leading powerhouses, it is going to be very prolific and important technology in the near future. Want to know more? -- Read the book!
You can purchase Java Web Services in a Nutshell from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Wow, why bother typing out that review when you could have just posted a link to ORA's description. ;)
Can anyone explain the differences between "Java Web Services in a Nutshell" and "Java Web Services" both published by O'Reilly? Look very similar with the latter probably a bit outdated seeing as it was published March 2002. Is this Nutshell book just a rehash of the other book but with updated API's?
I have to implement a set of web services here on (I know, I know, not my choice) MS SQL 2000 Server. I have the option of using ASP (gack), Perl, or PHP, or any combination thereof. At first, probably mostly HTTP GET and POSTs, but eventually we'll implement SOAP.
What books (O'Reilly?), if any, are a 'must have' for this type of work, and these tools? I know my way around PHP reasonably well, Perl at a not-quite-amateur-not-quite-pro level, and ASP / Java not at all. I've got two months, give or take, so I don't want to take the time to get up to speed on a whole new language.
Any first-hand recommendations would be much appreciated; I've got to order books today (found out yesterday)...
Argh.
THANKS!!!
geek. lawyer.
"I expected this book to be similar to other "Nutshell" books that I like and am familiar with:
a very accurate and concise description of the domain, followed by a huge API reference."
Which is exactly what I'm looking for when buying a Nutshell book and expect to get.
"this book reads more like a tutorial"
Which is precisely what I don't want when buying a Nutshell book.
Thanks for the review, you may have saved me grave diappointment.
KFG
Y'know, Web Services may--may--be an absolutely wonderful thing, but this review has done slightly less than nothing to convince me otherwise. I'll readily admit that I look askance at Web Services because all I read or hear about them comes from four-color glossies loaded with as many new acronyms as hyperbolic business-speak. I will admit that I know next to nothing about these services from the technical standpoint, and I will further acknowledge that if I were to read these books, I could very well be won over by them.
That said, this review did absolutely nothing to make me want to pick these books up. The main body of your review consists of bulleted list of acronyms that does little more than define them by using other, more commonly recognized acronyms. You then go on to tell us that it's a good book without giving us any reasons beyond a nebulous "the author dedicates enormous effort to showing intricate but very relevant technical details without obscuring the big picture". Well, gosh, that sums up just about any technical manual worth it's salt, man! What makes this one special? What about this book is going to fix the "wrong ideas" I have about Web Services?
You talk about how the book contains no hype (I do hope you appreciate the irony of ending that sentence with an exclamation point, by the way.) You then close the review with "Judging by the hype and money being spent on it by the leading powerhouses, it is going to be very prolific and important technology in the near future." If you're trying to correct misconceptions about Web Services, I can only assume that you want more and more technical people to view Web Services as the Fad-Of-The-Week for PHB's worldwide and not a useful, powerful technology.
This isn't a review, it's an outline of the book, and a rambling one, at that. Tell us what makes it a good book, dammit! Tell us why we're wrong about Web Services being little more than marketing fluff and flashy buzzwords!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Ugh. Another instance of moderators on crack. Why is this post informative? It is just a copy and paste of the original and it will still be page widened until they fix the original (at which point this is redundant).
Want to know more? -- Read the book!<nobr>
That is causing the following horizintal rule and "buy it here" line to expand the page. How rude.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
- For the -wsdl2java option there isn't any documented way to set an http-proxy host (I think my workaround was to call after calling Ant's setproxy target first and then calling wscompile in an Ant target)
- the "config.xml" documentation or even the DTD can't be found anywhere!
Sun did a poor job of making the whole web services creation easy (ugh!