java hosting


Title
Author
Publisher
ISBN
Reviewed by
Review text
Category

Your search returned 31 matching documents



AXIS: Next Generation Java SOAP
by Romin Irani, S. Jeelani Basha


Peer Information
1 edition
May 2002
250 pages
Reviewed by John Wetherbie, August 2002
  (8 of 10)


If you want to jump in and start learning about and creating web services this is a good book to have. As the title indicates, this book introduces you to the Apache eXtensible Interaction System (AXIS). AXIS is an implementation of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).

The book walks you through an introduction to SOAP and related standards and how to install AXIS on your system. From there you deploy a simple web service and walk through the elements of AXIS in more detail. A discussion of Handlers and Chains, which allow you to add your custom functionality to AXIS, has its own chapter. The book finishes up with a case study that pulls all the topics covered together in one application.

The book contains a great deal of example code and diagrams to explain what is going on. The fact that it does this in less than 300 pages is the best point about the book. This book is definitely meant to get you going with AXIS. The one complaint I have is that the book does not have an index.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Building Web Services with Java: Making Sense of XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI
by Steve Graham, Simon Simeonov, Toufic Boubez, Glen Daniels, Doug Davis, Yuichi Nakamura, Ryo Neyama


Pearson Education
1 edition
December 2001
450 pages
Reviewed by Kyle Brown, January 2002
  (8 of 10)


This book provides coverage most of the current web services standards and technologies, and gives you at least an understanding of where they all fit, while still providing you with enough depth on the crucial ones (SOAP (with Axis), UDDI, etc.) so that you can get started with real projects.

I particularly liked the way in which the authors have created an all-in-one reference book on the most important web services technologies. For instance, I've never been able to read SOAP messages without having a reference on XML namespaces and XML schemas handy -- no more -- it's all covered in this book.

The coverage of the new Apache Axis project is especially good; not only does it explain the advantages of the new architecture for handling SOAP headers, but it gives code examples for making use of these new features. This is to be expected, since many of the authors of this book are major contributors to the Axis project.

I also found the chapters on Web Services security and UDDI to be helpful and enlightening. While all of the chapters in the book don't live up to the promise of these excellent chapters, it's still overall a great introduction to this new set of technologies.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Professional Java Web Services
by


Peer Information
1 edition
January 2002
600 pages
Reviewed by Margarita Isayeva, March 2002
  (5 of 10)


I have a feeling that this book will miss its target audience.

The word "Professional" in series title apparently signals that you are expected to know what Web services are, how they fit in distributed computing model, why do you need them, and whether you need them or not in the first place. The book brings you directly to "how to" and digs into mundane implementation details - lots of code and mandatory for Wrox books case study. It isn't clear for me what value lightly commented code delivers to the audience defined as "professional". All discussed packages (Apache SOAP, Axis, Glue etc.) come with their own examples and pretty good documentation...

Code-driven approach would serve better not "professionals", but beginners, "following" learners, if to use Alistair Cockburn's terminology. "They need one (procedure - M.I.) to learn first, one that works. They copy it; they learn it." Of course, to be useful for beginners, discussion needs to be more gentle and instructions more detailed and accurate...

It wouldn't be fair to say there is nothing besides commented code, though. There are "theoretical" chapters for each contributing protocol: SOAP, WSDL, UDDI etc. which do not deviate too far from corresponding specifications. There are chapters on assorted issues from security to JAXM/JAXR, but I did not get much from a brief overview.

In short, this book is too difficult and too terse for inexperienced programmers, and too verbose and unfocused for experienced folk.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Soap Programming with Java
by William Brogden


Sybex
unknown edition
January 2002
448 pages
Reviewed by Michael Ernest, March 2002
  (5 of 10)


This book was rough going for me; I'm still not sure what it's about or what I gained from it.

I expected to read a) a vision of SOAP's place in network computing, and b) how Java applies to it. What I got was a sprawling discussion that included more than it left out -- UDDI, WDSL, .NET, DOM, SAX, XML-RPC, Jini, JMS, J2ME, JDBC, JAF, Tomcat. Some of these were covered by bullet points, or links to "more information," or term definitions, or tables of who's doing what. And I simply forgot what I was reading and started over two or three times.

There are dozens of snooped SOAP chatter listed in the book, which I think the reader is just supposed to pore over and "understand." For me, those listings support my conviction say either XML is a waste of time, or there's nothing to understand about it. I can count on one finger the books I have read about HTTP that show listing after listing of HTTP traffic; it doesn't explain itself.

The lack of direction and cohesion in this book makes it frustrating to read. I learned what SOAP is; after that, I'm unsure. Lots of things are covered, but without attaching significance to many of them, it's hard to say if that's good or bad.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Web Service Faceplates
by Stephen Mohr, Michael Corning, Erik Fuller, Donald Kackman, Michael John


Wrox
1 edition
March 2002
291 pages
Reviewed by Margarita Isayeva, August 2002
  (8 of 10)


Interesting and innovative book, but mainstream programmers looking for practically applicable solutions should look elsewhere.
The book explores a blend of ideas:
1) shift of processing logic from server to client;
2) declarative rather than procedural programming;
3) model-based and schema based development with automatic code generation.
The fact that Web services were chosen as an illustrative example is tangential to the nature of these ideas. Moreover, parts specific to Web Services are particularly weak.
First chapters illustrate implementation of "faceplates" - chunks of data, representation and behavior; technically, a single XML file with embedded Jscript that server sends to the client. The client (IE browser) applies specified in hard-coded manner XSLT stylesheet and presents the result to the user. "Since the creators of the service are well versed in the nature of the service, they are arguably the best one to create a user interface for it. They know what the user should be shown" - I have trouble with this philosophy of Web Services.
As a next step "faceplates" are made SOAP-enabled. I am unsure what the service gained from wrapping its data in SOAP tags if SOAP shell is added as a string literal on the server and thrown away by the client.
Another word of caution: all implementations are thoroughly Microsoft-centric.
Real strength of the book are chapters devoted to Schema-based programming and Petri Nets as formalism for modeling state of an application. Full version of this review is posted in the "Book reviews" forum.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Developing Java Web Services
by Ramesh Nagappan, Robert Skoczylas, Rima Patel Sriganesh


Wiley
1 edition
December 2002
784 pages
Reviewed by Thomas Paul, March 2003
  (9 of 10)


The cover of this book says, "Timely. Practical. Reliable." and that is a good description of the book. It covers the current state of Java APIs for web services, it gives plenty of well thought out examples, and it provides enough information to actually make the alphabet soup of acronyms understandable. The book starts with an introduction to web services. The next section covers web services architecture and the standard technologies of SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI. Interoperability with non-Java applications is demonstrated with a .NET example. The book is written by three Sun employees so it does tend to be a bit Sun-centric as the next sections shows. The Java Web Services Developers Pack (JWSDP) is given plenty of coverage. JAXP, JAXB, JAXM, JAX-RPC, JAXR, may be just acronyms when you get this book but after reading the six chapters covering the JWSDP they will be technologies that you understand. A case study wraps up the six chapters putting the whole thing together. The book ends with a chapter on security and a look at Sun ONE. The book is full of examples demonstrating how to use each of these technologies. When you read a line such as, "The real fun is understanding how the EncryptDecrypt class works," you know you are dealing with authors who love code. For developing Java web services you will be hard pressed to find a better book than this one.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Mastering Web Services Security
by Bret Hartman, Donald J. Flinn, Konstantin Beznosov, Shirley Kawamoto


Wiley
1 edition
January 2003
376 pages
Reviewed by Chris Mathews, March 2003
  (5 of 10)


This book definitely has its ups and downs. It gets off to a good start with an excellent overview of general security fundamentals and does a good job of explaining where web services fit into the picture. The authors then provide coverage of most of the current web service security technologies, though some like XACML and WS-Security are only briefly mentioned. For the most part the coverage is fairly good; however more practical examples would have been nice to see. I was somewhat surprised at the lack of coverage given to Passport and Liberty Alliance. Passport gets roughly half a page and Liberty Alliance gets about two pages. In neither case does the book go into any discussion on how these technologies would be implemented.

My biggest problem with this particular book is its bias towards Quadrasis EASI. At times the book feels like one of those TV infomercials that you get stuck watching on Sunday afternoons (okay maybe that's just me). Therefore, it should come as no surprise that all four authors currently work for Quadrasis and have a vested interest in Quadrasis EASI. While this interest may be understandable, it is unwelcome in a book entitled "Mastering Web Services Security".

Overall, this book is well written and does contain value, especially if your organization uses or plans to use Quadrasis EASI. However, I do not believe anyone will be "Mastering Web Services Security" from this book alone.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Java and SOAP
by Robert Englander


O'Reilly
1 edition
May 2002
276 pages
Reviewed by Ajith Kallambella, April 2003
  (6 of 10)


Overview -
SOAP is what makes the Web Services clock go around. In fact, SOAP can easily be used as a stand-alone channel without incurring the overheads of publish-find-and-bind cycle apparent in Web Services. Java's ever growing XML support makes it a language of choice for anyone considering implementing SOAP.

Why you should read this book -
Whether you are writing a new SOAP service or simply using an existing one, understanding what happens under the bonnet helps make your system more robust.

What this book covers -
This book covers almost everything you have to know about how Java supports the technology - core APIs, SOAP encoding, structure of SOAP messages, attachments, platform interoperability issues and some nice guidelines. It also includes some getting-started examples with two different SOAP servers- Apache and GLUE ? to help the reader understand how SOAP implementation differs. There is some introductory material covering JAX-RPC, JAXM, Apache Axis and WSDL. The chapters are well organized although the writing lacks reader-friendly approach.

Cons -
The book came out in May 2002 and hence a few things are out of date including SOAP spec and Apache implementation. Examples seem rather trivial and lack depth. Advanced SOAP programmers or those considering enterprise integration will be disappointed. Coverage on .NET interoperability is a far cry from even being introductory. I hope the next version of the book will adequately address real integration issues such as performance, transactions, and security.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Java Web Services Architecture
by James McGovern, Sameer Tyagi, Michael Stevens, Sunil Mathew


Morgan Kaufmann
unknown edition
April 2003
831 pages
Reviewed by Gregg Bolinger, July 2003
  (5 of 10)


This book should have been titled "1001 ways to use XML with JAVA". And it should have been 5 books. It took me forever to get through this 800 page book on Java Web Services. I felt there were way too many concepts to try and understand in one book alone. I also didn't see the need for an entire chapter on SOAP. There are plenty of SOAP books out there.

What I did like about this book were the examples. There were a lot of them and I won't buy a book without good, complete, working examples.

To summarize, there are better books out there for the money on Java Web Services.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Java Web Services in a Nutshell
by Kim Topley


O'Reilly
1 edition
June 2003
600 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, July 2003
  (8 of 10)


After the JavaOne 2003 conference, there is no more doubt that web services are one of the next big things that is going to gain ground in the distributed computing world. The advent of web services is said to be at least as big as the change from mainframes to the client/server architecture. In order to be prepared for this, developers need to quickly acquire plenty of practical knowledge. This book provides an in-depth coverage of how to go about programming web services using J2EE 1.4 and the latest release of Sun's Java Web Services Developer Pack (JWSDP). All this is coupled with an extensive quick reference to Sun's web services APIs.

The book first gives some insights on the purpose of web services and how they are architecturally organized. Then, it delves into the SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ), the Java API for XML Messaging (JAXM), and the client-side Java API for XML Registries (JAXR). It also investigates the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and deeply explores the Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC). The use of JWSDP's tools and configuration files are examined and explained as well.

Summing up, this book nicely follows O'Reilly's "In A Nutshell" philosophy by being more of a "daily companion" to keep handy than a high-level tutorial. I recommend it to any developer willing to get or stay in touch with the new trends in web services development.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture: The Savvy Manager's Guide
by Douglas K. Barry


Morgan Kaufmann
1 edition
April 2003
245 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, July 2003
  (8 of 10)


Service-oriented architectures (SOA) have been around for quite some time now (think DCOM, CORBA and Jini). Their main goal is to provide support for connecting various heterogeneous enterprise services together. As inter-/intra-enterprise collaboration and integration become increasingly vital, industrial and research consortia have recognized the need for building a new generation of SOA. Indeed, the author presents web services as the most likely set of technologies that is going to impose itself as the next generation of SOA.

If you expect tons of XML and Java listings, this is not a book for you. This book is primarily targeted at managers in need of evaluating how their companies could benefit from web services. It clearly identifies the driving and restraining forces for adopting web services and explains how to manage such a technology change. The author voluntarily remains at a high level of abstraction and does not delve too much into details. However, he does a good job of illustrating the various components that interact within a distributed system and how (and why!!) web services could be integrated into such a system. As a concrete example, the author discusses how a business traveler could take advantage of web services (travel, car and hotel reservations; personal, manager's and wife's calendars synchronization; on-the-fly itinerary; etc).

In summary, this book provides a valuable introduction to SOA in general and web services in particular. I would have expected more than 200 pages on this exciting subject, though.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


J2EE Web Services
by Richard Monson-Haefel


Addison-Wesley Professional
1 edition
October 2003
928 pages
Reviewed by Kyle Brown, February 2004
  (8 of 10)


If you intend on doing any serious Web Services work in Java over the next couple of years, you need this book. It's an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting -- 887 pages!) tome on the subject.

Richard manages to cover all of the major standards and API's for Web Services, in sufficient depth that you can develop to them, and appreciate the subtleties in how they interact. It's chock-full of examples, and loaded with information from one of the best authors in the business.

However, there are a couple of things in the book that aren't covered as deeply as they could have been. My personal bone is that the coverage of Security is drawn directly from the spec -- which means that because the spec is kind of fuzzy with regard to security that your container may have different behaviors than the behavior that is assumed. He doesn't discuss Web Services security at all (which is quite understandable given the focus on the spec), but given that it's a part of most implementations of J2EE web services, may have been a good thing to cover for perspective. Overall, it's still a very, very good book, but not perfect. Just be aware that the Web Services capabilities of your particular container may differ slightly.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Web Services - A Manager's Guide
by Ann Thomas Manes


Addison-Wesley Professional
1 edition
June 2003
352 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, March 2004
  (9 of 10)


Anne Thomas Manes takes a non-technical, yet quite original, approach to explaining all the odds and ends of web services from a manager's perspective. This book is targeted at managers in strong need of a quick and comprehensive view of web services, it does not contain a single line of code. Programmers, be advised.

The author first lays some foundations by giving some pieces of basic information on what web services are and aren't, how they can be used and when, and most importantly why one should consider using them or why not. In order to illustrate their practicality, some real-world scenarios are given where web services are being successfully used while bringing real value (Amazon, Google, etc).

Ann Thomas Manes goes on explaining the fundamental technologies underlying the web services infrastructure, such as XML, WSDL, UDDI and SOAP. She also deemed necessary to introduce historical facts about the inception and development of these technologies. People who tend to loose the overall view over who does what in the web services world might like these anecdotes.

The author also briefly touches upon advanced topics, such as security, transaction, orchestration and choreography.

Finally, the author wraps up by giving an extensive, yet non-exhaustive, list of open-source and commercial web services platforms and UDDI registries available on the web. She also provides a good deal of very helpful evaluation guidelines that should help you select the proper web services tools that suit your particular project.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Developing Enterprise Web Services: An Architect's Guide
by Sandeep Chatterjee, James Webber


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
November 2003
592 pages
Reviewed by Ajith Kallambella, July 2004
  (8 of 10)


Consider this - Web Services and SOAP is perhaps the only recallable evolution of technology that has witnessed the single largest involvement of standards bodies and industry bellwethers. The result? A puzzling plethora of proffered protocols that continues to confuse both sideliners and early adopters every day.

While managers are finding it increasingly difficult to understand the direction, developers are craving for clarity, consistency and a unified approach for WS adoption. "Give me the tools" they cry every day, while they keep adding to their "To Read" list a handful of new acronyms every week. The big question is, when can we build Rome, if at all?

With a gentle and brief (thank god!) introduction to underlying concepts such as SOAP, XML and UDDI, authors start talking about broader concerns - conversation, transaction, security, workflow, QoS and everything in between. While accentuating nuances of evolving standards and guessing the future trends, authors offer strategies, patterns, and tips on pitfalls to avoid. They skirt around the political interoperability issues around J2EE and .NET and focus purely on the standards. Architect's Note included at the end of every chapter makes title justified.

An implementation of WS-based ordering system presented as a case study concludes the book by bringing it all together through excellent step-by-step approach.

Although almost a year old, this book can be a survival guide for people in the trenches and the ROI-Savvy managers as well. It helps you tell the wheat from the chaff.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Web Services in Finance
by Paul A. Watters


Apress
1 edition
November 2004
256 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, November 2004
  (6 of 10)


Given that I'm currently working for a financial institution and that I have been developing web services solutions for a while now, I could only dream of ever seeing a book titled "Web Services in Finance". When I picked it up, I was hoping to see web services technologies applied to real and concrete financial case studies. However, I must admit that the reality was quite different.

The book is very well written but its content has not much to do with what the title advertises. The book does not provide much information as to how to use web services for carrying out hardcore financial business. The author merely uses some financials terms here and there for explaining basic web services concepts and for showing some toy examples. He voluntarily stays at a very high level, which completely defeats the intent behind the title he has chosen in my opinion.

Even though I expected something else, I still found this book to be a fun read. It can definitely be valuable for beginners in that it provides a very good introduction to the fundamental web services technologies, such as SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc, and it also goes into important topics like security and qualities of service. My biggest complaint is just that the box does not match the description that stands on it.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Real World Web Services
by Will Iverson


O'Reilly
1 edition
October 2004
222 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, December 2004
  (9 of 10)


You would like to concretely jump into the web services movement but all you can find are the same old books with invariably repetitive and boring toy examples, such as the infamous StockQuote and Wheater web services. Don?t look any further and grab yourself a copy of this book. Will Iverson takes a significantly different approach and shows you how to build concrete web services applications by leveraging existing web services APIs provided by important industry actors, such as, Amazon, Google, eBay, Gracenote (CDDB), FedEx, PayPal, Interfax, etc.

What's more, the author does not limit himself to presenting dry facts about how to work with those web services. Instead, he elegantly demonstrates how to compose them in order to create competitive analysis, list auctions and estimate shipping costs, integrate billing with faxing technologies, syndicate searches, aggregate news from different sources using Quartz and RSS, build a custom CD catalog, dig out and deliver hot news, automatically create daily discussions on Blogger and LiveJournal, and much more.

Basically, this book provides exactly what is often missing from other tomes while managing at the same time to stay extremely simple and straightforward, yet very complete and accurate. I would definitely advise it to any Java developer who is eager to start writing effective and working web services code.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Business Process Execution Language for Web Services
by Matjaz Juric, Benny Mathew, Poornachandra Sarang, Matjaz Juric, Benny Mathew, Poornachandra Sarang


Packt Publishing
second edition
January 2006
372 pages
Reviewed by Ulf Dittmer, June 2006
  (6 of 10)


The book starts off with a couple of chapters giving the motivation for why one might want to use BPEL, and an overview of the complete Web Services stack that supports it. As a number of those standards are not in widespread use, this provides some helpful context.

The heart of the book are two chapters that explain BPELs capabilities, and show them in action in an example that gets expanded step by step to make use of all those features. This is a sensible approach, as each step introduces just a bit more new stuff than the previous one covered.

Almost half of the book is taken up by introductions to two commercial BPEL servers from Oracle and Microsoft. This may be helpful for a reader who happens to run those products, but doesn't further the insight into BPEL itself.

The final chapter provides a reference to all BPEL features and constructs, which were introduced earlier in the book.

After reading the book, this reviewer had a much better feeling for what BPEL can and can not do. The lasting impression, though, is that BPEL sits on top of a large stack of WS-* standards, most of which struggle for adoption themselves, and that use of it should be considered carefully, as there may be simpler ways of achieving what it strives for.

The overall style is dry and technical, and a more thorough editing might have done some good, but the book is quite readable nonetheless.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Packt Publishing
1 edition
October 2004
270 pages
Reviewed by Jeanne Boyarsky, April 2005
  (8 of 10)


"Business Process Execution Language for Web Services" is a good tutorial and reference for BPEL. The authors state that the book is targeted towards current web services developers and architects. Appropriately, the book assumes knowledge of XML, UML, and of course, web services.

The book was written by three authors and the chapters are separated by author. One author wrote chapter one, which includes an overview of BPEL, concrete examples of workflow and how BPEL fits into the big picture. The main author wrote chapters two through four, which flow well and teach BPEL through a running example, along with describing Oracle's BPEL tools. The third author wrote chapter five, which describes Microsoft's BPEL tools. The book ends with a clear, concise syntax reference. While all the chapters provide valuable information, the first and last chapters seem disjointed from the remainder of the book.

There are plenty of diagrams to show architecture and flow, something very important in BPEL. The meat of the book teaches BPEL, something it does very well. The examples in chapters two and three gradually grow in complexity and build on each other. When describing Oracle and Microsoft's tools, appropriate screenshots are provided. I recommend this book for anyone starting out with BPEL or just looking to learn it.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Web Services Platform Architecture
by Sanjiva Weerawarana, et al


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
April 2005
456 pages
Reviewed by Valentin Crettaz, July 2005
  (8 of 10)


In their current incarnation as an implementation of the service-oriented architecture (SOA), XML web services are made up of a host of loosely coupled standards. Among them, we can find the traditional SOAP, WSDL and UDDI specifications as well as the WS-* specifications, which comprise, WS-Addressing, WS-Policy, WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Security, WS-AtomicTransaction, WS-BusinessActivity, WS-BPEL, etc. On the one hand, these emerging standards aim at better decoupling the variety of concerns that make up the web services technology stack. On the other hand, developers and architects often find themselves stuck in front of this big maze of documents.

Five IBM collaborators have teamed up in order to make this entire technology stack accessible to web services-savvy people and to show how it is implemented by XML web services. The fourteen very well-written, yet sometimes overly tortuous, chapters elegantly introduce how the discovery and negotiation vertical layers orchestrate the transport, messaging, description, quality of service and business process horizontal layers. The authors finally put the dissected technologies at work with two concrete case studies that illustrate how these technologies build up into a consistent whole.

I would definitely not recommend this book to XML agnostic people and novices. Moreover, the content is intentionally not targeted at developers as it does not contain extensive and detailed code coverage of the different specifications. As a consequence, this book is best suited to consultants, architects and technical managers willing to better understand the web services platform architecture.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


BPEL Cookbook
by Jeremy Bolie, Michael Cardella, Stany Blanvalet, et al.


Packt Publishing
1 edition
June 2006
188 pages
Reviewed by Ulf Dittmer, December 2006
  (5 of 10)


The book is billed as a showcase of BPEL best practices, demonstrated by showing 10 real-world projects from a variety of companies. It doesn't become clear what constitutes the "best practice" of each project, though, as there are no comparisons or discussion of alternative solutions. Sometimes the mere fact that something is doable using BPEL apparently makes it an SOA best practice. The cases are descriptions of particular solutions using BPEL, and there is no overarching theme to tie them together. They do serve to highlight particular problems faced when implementing SOA, and how to address them using BPEL, though.

One aspect of the book this reviewer found problematic is that almost all cases use (and sometimes require to use) the Oracle BPEL implementation, Process Manager and Process Designer, all the way to showing plenty of screenshots of its GUIs and dialog boxes. While this will be helpful for Oracle shops, it limits the usefulness of the book for developers using different software, especially as some cases rely on Oracle-specific details like the implementation API and management tools.

The book is relatively short at 170 pages -- which this reviewer counts as a plus in the days of 1000-page technology books -- and is well written and illustrated. Anyone determined to use BPEL will find interesting ways to use it in it. A justification for using BPEL it is not, as it assumes that SOA in general, and BPEL in particular, are industry best practices.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


SOA Using Java Web Services
by Mark D. Hansen


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
May 2007
608 pages
Reviewed by Ulf Dittmer, October 2007
  (7 of 10)


The book covers the development of web services using the Java EE 5 platform. It provides a comprehensive yet detailed overview of the various components that play a part in it, from JAX-WS clients using REST and SOAP, through data binding with JAXB, to developing, packaging and deploying JAX-WS services, and the various JSR standards covering these technologies. The author also points out the shortcomings of these APIs, and possible workarounds.

At every step of the way ready-to-run example code is presented that illustrates the points made in the text. The code is also tied to numerous WSDL and Schema examples, so the reader should not be afraid to delve into those. The examples culminate in a program accessing various shopping sites via web services, and exposing their accumulated information via a web service itself, thus tying both ends together.

The writing is technical and to-the-point. Sometimes the minutiae of the examples become a bit exhausting, but if a chapter isn't of immediate interest to the reader, it can generally be skimmed over; the chapter introductions and conclusions provide enough hints that the reader knows what he's missing.

This reviewer wouldn't recommend the book as a tutorial for someone who's never developed web services. It is a good introduction to JAX-WS and associated APIs for experienced developers, though, or a reference of the finer points for anyone who doesn't use these technologies continuously.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Service Oriented Java Business Integration
by Binildas C. A.


Packt Publishing
1 edition
February 2008
436 pages
Reviewed by Marc Peabody, May 2008
  (5 of 10)


I was hoping to simply learn more about Java Business Integration. The first 70 pages are a decent start on this. Following that, however, ServiceMix component tutorials abound, and not in an entertaining cover-to-cover read kind of way.

The writing is often wordy and grammar and spelling slips are fairly common. Most books I set down to thoughtfully consider interesting points but more often I wondered why the author boasted working with many desperate systems (later I realized the author meant disparate) or if wetting my hands with code was anything like getting them dirty.

There isn't much of a practical flow from chapter to chapter, the "Use Cases" never really explain the problems that the samples solve, and seeing the my console's output match the book's screenshots after running the code (which is completely downloadable) isn't particularly gratifying.

If you're working with ServiceMix but frustrated by a lack of documentation, then this book might be the right fit for you. Otherwise I recommend you save your money for something else.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Java CAPS Basics: Implementing Common EAI Patterns
by Michael Czapski, Sebastian Krueger, Brendan Marry, Saurabh Sahai, Peter Vaneris, Andrew Walker


Prentice Hall PTR
1 edition
May 2008
496 pages
Reviewed by Michael Ernest, May 2008
  (9 of 10)


The only complaint I have with this book is the word 'Basics' in the title. It's expected readers are familiar with EAI patterns, but better if they've read Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.

The authors also assume readers are familiar, if not proficient, with the JCAPS tools. With that in mind, this book and its companion CD relate each discussed pattern to an implemented solution in JCAPS. It took me quite some time to figure out some of these solutions on my own, and I was pleased to have my hunches confirmed by experts. Other pattern implementations were not apparent to me; I'll save a great deal of time using them as given.

The discussion is thorough, deliberate and complete, including drawbacks and limitations that go hand-in-hand with certain pattern solutions. These are valuable insights, but they can make the reading heavy work at times. I recommend chewing off no more than a chapter's worth of patterns at a time, and reading each pattern implementation twice before implementing it once.

The companion CD has many screen shots. Don't be alarmed by the few illustrations in the printed text. The CD doc is 700 pages, and provides detailed graphic cues for implementing the patterns.

The price seemed high at first. With the companion CD, however, it's clear no small effort was made. I think the market could still another book though, one that covers JCAPS fundamentals. This guide is not for beginners.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Pro PayPal E-Commerce
by Damon Williams


Apress
1 edition
March 5, 2007
279 pages
Reviewed by Katrina Owen, May 2008
  (8 of 10)


This book is aimed squarely at developers, however it does not assume that the reader knows the first thing about PayPal, and the introductory chapters do not require any coding background to understand.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the problems that PayPal addresses, the services that PayPal offers, advice on when one service might be more appropriate than an other, as well as an in-depth coverage of how to work with each service and integrate the service into a website or web application.

Throughout the book, the author highlights gotchas and provides helpful tips, such as 'remember to write down the fake credit card number the first time it is provided, because that is the only chance you get'. It becomes obvious that the author has spent time with the development community answering the same questions time and again, and seeing developers make the same mistakes over and over.

The book is language-agnostic, with code examples from many mainstream languages. Developers who have experience programming in a single language may find it difficult to port the knowledge to their language of choice.

Though all of the information is freely available in various forms of documentation on PayPal's website, I would highly recommend the book if you are considering using PayPal as a payment option as it is cohesive and comprehensive.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Java Web Services: Up and Running
by Martin Kalin


O'Reilly Media
1 edition
February 2009
320 pages
Reviewed by Swati Soni, June 2012
  (8 of 10)



Java Web Services Up and Running is a very good reference book for leaning web services Concepts and developing Web services using Java programming language. For those who are newbies in WebServices, this book offers a complete understanding of SOAP and Restful Webservices.It explains Jax-WS broadly, so it is best for all those who want to learn the basics of writing, developing, deploying and consuming SOAP-based services in core java.

A prior knowledge of programming language Java and development of web components will help you understand the examples in a better way.I would highly recommend this book as a easy to read and implement book for Web-services using java.

---
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


RESTful Web Services Cookbook: Solutions for Improving Scalability and Simplicity
by Subbu Allamaraju


Yahoo Press
1 edition
March 2010
316 pages
Reviewed by Deepak Bala, July 2012
  (9 of 10)



This is a useful little book. Receipe books can be tricky in that they can outdate themselves or end up concentrating on recipes that are not widely sort after. This book does not suffer from these problem.

What I like:

* The book is pretty crisp. You can breeze through it in no time.
* It is quite practical. I ended up changing some of my REST representation after following the advice in the book.
* Since it is a recipe book you need not follow any order as such. Jump to any chapter at will.
* Implementation details are not stressed (like how one would solve a problem in jersey Vs some other framework). That keeps the advice clean and agnostic of frameworks.

What I dislike:

There is not much to add here against this book. You will not always find a recipe that fits your problem description, but you can use the internet and public forums to search how other developers solved that problem. Reading this book also puts you in a good position to judge if a solution follows good practices.

If you are looking for a book that provides laconic answers to common problems encountered while developing with the REST architecture style, buy this one.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Professional C# Web Services: Building .NET Web Services with ASP.NET and .NET Remoting
by Andrew Krowczyk, Zach Greenvoss, Christian Nagel, Ashish Banerjee, Thiru Thangarathinam, Aravind Corera, Chris Peiris, Brad Maiani


Wrox
1 edition
December 2001
550 pages
Reviewed by Thomas Paul, September 2002
  (7 of 10)


Building web services is generally a simple task in .NET. This book covers the two methods available to .NET developers to build web services, ASP.NET (referred to as XML Web Services) and .NET Remoting (a technology similar to RMI, although with more flexibility). There are several books that cover building web services with APS.NET but this book is rare in that it covers both technologies. If you aren't interested in .NET Remoting then you may want to look elsewhere. Overall, this book does a nice job of covering web services in .NET although it could have been better. The book suffers from the common problem of multiple authors, it tends to be repetitive. For example, the SOAP protocol. is explained in detail in chapter 2 , and then again in chapter 4. The chapter on web services security gives a good description of cryptography but doesn't discuss other issues of web service security. Although the book does discuss user authentication (although briefly) it does not discuss the problem of passing user cre dentials from one web service to another. At least half the book is case studies and examples so the actual content is not deep. The book is a fairly good basic introduction to web services. If you are new to web services and you are looking for a book that covers ASP.NET and .NET Remoting, you could do a lot worse than starting with this book.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Web Services Patterns: Java Edition
by Paul B. Monday


Apress
1 edition
April 2003
352 pages
Reviewed by Thomas Paul, August 2003
  (8 of 10)


Now that we have read all the books on the basics of web services and have a good understanding of how they are supposed to work it is time to get down to actually trying to create some decent designs for our web services applications. That is where this book fits in. The book shows how to apply design patterns to a web service architecture in order to solve common design problems. If you are designing a web service architecture you will want to read this book before drawing another UML diagram.

The book starts out by looking at the design patterns used in web services itself. This part of the book was interesting but not overly useful. The next part, making up most of the book, covers design patterns that you are likely to need in developing web applications. This part of the book is excellent. Each pattern is discussed in detail and then demonstrated in a case study that is developed throughout the book. The book covers twenty different patterns so there is bound to be one that is applicable to your application.

The book contains only snippets of code from the case study so you will need to download the code in order to get the full value of the case study. The reader of this book should be comfortable with web services and design patterns in general and be ready for an in-depth discussion of web services architecture.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Enterprise Services Architecture
by Dan Woods


O'Reilly
1 edition
September 2003
223 pages
Reviewed by Ajith Kallambella, December 2003
  (6 of 10)


In the second book in the series between O'Reilly and SAP, author Dan Woods takes the reader through an interesting tour of Enterprise Services Architecture and the evolution of WebServices(WS). He makes a business case for applying WS in the enterprise and argues that despite slow standardization and lack of broader vendor support, WS strategy will surely benefit early adapters.

For starters get this - The concept of Web Services was actually conceived by SAP! Woods shares the historical perspective and speaks about implementing the very first SOA based applications while working at SAP. The thin UI layer of MySAP.com uses a services layer to communicate with loosely coupled components and data services.

This book is aimed at senior management and IT professionals involved in building software solutions for the ever-changing enterprise landscape. This is a book about the philosophical, ideological and evolutionary significance of SOA. In the section titled Making a business case for the use of SOA, Woods looks at Ent.Web Services through the eyes of a consultant, an analyst, a venture capitalist and finally a system integrator, and quotes from the very best industry experts in each of these domains. Beyond the trenches of IT shops, in what Woods describes as Part Engineering discipline and part Computer Science applied to practical business problems, he hypothesizes that pervasive use of Web services will ultimately result in an incremental improvement towards a more efficient society. Efficiency will primarily apply to reduce annoyances of everyday life such as filing for taxes, setting up health insurance or getting a driver s license. Freed up human capital will cumulatively help build efficient, elegant and practical living conditions for all.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


100 SOA Questions: Asked and Answered
by Kerrie Holley, Ali Arsanjani


Prentice Hall
1 edition
November 2010
272 pages
Reviewed by Deepak Bala, December 2010
  (4 of 10)



Before we even dive into the review, I thought it would be useful to mention the target audience for this book. The authors recommend that technologists / business stakeholders / architects would benefit from this book. It is not a technology book.

The expectation I had when I started reading this book was that it would give me clear / concise answers to specific problems / scenarios that one encounters in the SOA world. Unfortunately I found the answers to be wayward and not to the point. So what did I dislike about this book ?

1. The authors are undecided about the technical mastery that is required to read this book. For example, a mini tutorial on REST is provided abruptly while answering a question. I would expect an architect or technologist to know what REST is.
2. The answers are very abstract. So abstract that their meaning could be interpreted in a myriad of ways.
3. Some assumptions that are made about the architecture of a target system (the presence of pre-packaged software for example) are not necessarily true for all enterprise systems.
4. The book recommends that you visit the web site www.100Questions.info to have any other questions that you have answered. At the time of this writing, the website is simply a blank page that has been parked by godaddy. Very disappointing.

As for what I liked about the book, you can traverse to any question you want and have it answered. The questions are not necessarily linked to each other in any way. So you can read a question about architecture and then jump to say governance without any problem.

Overall, I did not derive enough value from reading this book.

---
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Prentice Hall
1 edition
November 2010
272 pages
Reviewed by Ulf Dittmer, January 2011
  (4 of 10)


"SOA is a paradigm shift." (Q60) that "will forever be entrenched as a best practice" (Q94), and which is an evolution beyond OOP and Agile methodologies (Q38). These are the basic premises of this book, and anyone not buying into them will have trouble getting value out of reading it. The book seems out of a time a few years back when the SOA and web service hypes were at their peak; now that the hype has subsided, and the world has, by and large, recognized SOA as not being a game-changer but just another tool of the trade, and moved beyond large parts of the SOAP ecosystem, it feels strangely out of place.

The authors work, respectively, for IBM -one of the largest pushers of SOA infrastructure software- and a consulting company that specializes in introducing SOA in companies (something that the book advocates, Q48), so maybe this is to be expected. The book emphasizes big enterprise topics and assumes that a remodeling of the software and IT infrastructure (like putting in place ESB and BPM) need to be part of the overall SOA effort. No effort is made to present or justify SOA in environments that are not prepared to make that effort.

The 100 questions and answers are bundled into related categories like architecture, governance, organization that can be read individually as needed. That's a nice touch, as not all material will be of interest to all readers, or at all times, so chapters can be read on an as-needed basis. The presentation itself is clear, and aided by numerous diagrams that help illustrate the main points.

---
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Service Design Patterns
by Robert Daigneau


Addison-Wesley Professional
1 edition
November 2011
352 pages
Reviewed by Jan Cumps, January 2012
  (7 of 10)



There are a number of good books that teach you how to develop web services. But it is harder to find guidance on what architectural choices to make.

And that is what this book is about. It discusses the options (yes: patterns) you have when working with services, what choices you have, and - the part that I found very helpful - what the implications of these choices are.

It also tells you which design decisions bring you to the point of no return: once you make your choice, it will be hard to change to another approach later.

The organization is very structured. The chapters follow a strict schema of describing the patterns. That makes it easy to use the book as a reference, but it doesn't turn the book into a swinging story.

A good book if you need to make design choices, or if you want to understand merits and pitfalls of an architecture. It is not your book if you are looking for a web services implementation guide.

---
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.

Discuss book in the Saloon — More info at Amazon.com


Pro Spring 2.5
by Jan Machacek, Jessica Ditt, Aleksa Vukotic, Anirvan Chakraborty


Apress
1 edition
August 2008
920 pages
Reviewed by Mark Spritzler, December 2008
  (9 of 10)


8 1/2, but since we only have 8 or 9, I liked it enough to make sure I rounded up instead of down.

I highly recommend this book to learn Core Spring. It is the only book currently out by Dec 08 that covers version 2.5. Other books still only cover 2.0

I found the writing easy to understand, I found that they covered the material very well with good examples. They cover a lot of material and leave you with great in-depth knowledge in each of those Spring technologies.

Now, I don't agree with everything they say in the book, but it isn't that they are wrong, but that I just disagree with certain statements. For example, in a Note section they stated that "They do not encourage the use of annotations on the objects you will persist using Hibernate." Using JPA Annotations, from an ORM tool expert, is a best practice and makes your life so much easier, in my opinion, and many other ORM experts. This note should have been left out of the book, unless they wanted to fully cover why.

More info at Amazon.com
 
The Bunkhouse administrator is Ankit Garg.