Rating: 
Summary: Excellent coverage of Web Services Topics
Review: I've been thoroughly impressed with this book. It throws a wide net over 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 here 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 an great introduction to this new set of technologies. And by the way, the guy that gave the book 1 star because it has "no source code downloadable" should have first tried going to www.samspublishing.com and done a search on the author's names -- the page for the book CLEARLY has a section for "downloads" where you can get the source code.
Rating:
Summary: Sets the standard
Review: I've just seen this book and am pleased with the focus and attention to detail. Beyond the useful framework to get up to speed with web services, you can see the details that tells you the authors know what they are doing. If you are building Web Services and using Java tools--which you should be doing!--this book is what you need.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad Book
Review: It seems very hard reading this book (Not about the difficult of Java and Web Services, but how they are presented).
I Think once You have finished to read this book You are able to do nothing.
Sorry...only my opinion
Rating:
Summary: Right to the Heart of the Matter
Review: It's hard to read anything today without running into a lot of hype and buzzwords. This is especially true with Web Service technologies. I've never had a technical book that cut to the chase and told me what I needed to know like this one does. I'm sure I'll read it cover to cover and be glad I did. Great job to everyone involved!
Rating: 
Summary: Pedantic, Good as a reference
Review: Pedantic, takes up a number of points of academic interest only. Way too long. Coverage is wide and detailed. Good, but not excellent writing style. Definately not a good first book or tutorial on web services. More intended as a reference or for the advanced student with prior hands on experience.
Rating:
Summary: Was 5 Stars a year ago
Review: Still a good reference. Funny someone wrote they had yet to find anything of value in it because just the other day I needed a concise review of XML schema. I found the XML primer from this book to be the best most clearly written explanation I had seen. And it cover a lot of ground in relatively few pages. Giving a book 1 star because it is dated is near sighted. Yes, look at the publication dates because things change fast. But when this book came out it was one of the better ones and so I think the authors deserve credit for that. It offers a nice explanation of the layers of web services, the various components that work together. While some things change, many things really just grow more complex and the latest explanation may not be the best. I can see dropping it a star but a good resource it was and still is as i noted. I was thinking about the value of older computer books the other day and I realized, sometimes the perspective is different in an older book so things that are no longer explained much are discussed with more detail. For example, a 1996 book on learning Java is obviously of no value, right? Well I thought so also. Then as i was going to toss it, I read the last chapter describing in great detail how Java works under the hood. I have NEVER seen such a complete techincal discussion down to the bits and bytes in any other book. And those things are still true today. So an older book can go into details you may not find in a new book because things taken for granted now were being explained for the first time then. Keep the better older ones, they can still help you as this one did me.
Rating:
Summary: Was 5 Stars a year ago
Review: Still a good reference. Funny someone wrote they had yet to find anything of value in it because just the other day I needed a concise review of XML schema. I found the XML primer from this book to be the best most clearly written explanation I had seen. And it cover a lot of ground in relatively few pages. Giving a book 1 star because it is dated is near sighted. Yes, look at the publication dates because things change fast. But when this book came out it was one of the better ones and so I think the authors deserve credit for that. It offers a nice explanation of the layers of web services, the various components that work together. While some things change, many things really just grow more complex and the latest explanation may not be the best. I can see dropping it a star but a good resource it was and still is as i noted. I was thinking about the value of older computer books the other day and I realized, sometimes the perspective is different in an older book so things that are no longer explained much are discussed with more detail. For example, a 1996 book on learning Java is obviously of no value, right? Well I thought so also. Then as i was going to toss it, I read the last chapter describing in great detail how Java works under the hood. I have NEVER seen such a complete techincal discussion down to the bits and bytes in any other book. And those things are still true today. So an older book can go into details you may not find in a new book because things taken for granted now were being explained for the first time then. Keep the better older ones, they can still help you as this one did me.
Rating: 
Summary: Good coverage of WSDL, SOAP, UDDI but light on JWSDP
Review: The coverage of WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI is clear and thorough. Even though the book has a number of authors, there's a nice flow between chapters and the writing is consistent and coherent. However, I gave the book only three stars because it has just a cursory review of Sun's Java Web Services Developer Pack. That's not surprising, considering JWSDP was in still in a larval stage when the book was written. But if you're a serious developer, you'll need to download JWSDP from Sun and go through the tutorial to learn the APIs.
Rating: 
Summary: Refreshing Overview of Web Services
Review: There is a tremendous amount of hype associated with Web Services, making it extremely difficult find a thoughtful perspective. In addition Web Services is a very fast moving target, most publications cannot keep pace with the developments. I was very impressed by how this book gives an "honest" overview of Web Services and cautions against making unrealistic promises. Additionally the authors are to be commended for not over-focusing on their employers Web Services strategy - the authors are mostly from IBM. This book is mainly for people who would like a deeper introduction on Web Services and sink their teeth on a number of examples. As with most technical books on new technologies, one cannot expect all the examples to work as described. Also some of the instructions given are more complicated than necessary. I would recommend using this book in conjunction with online research. Despite the cautionary paragraph above, I highly recommend this book. You will be hard pressed to find another book of this caliber on Web Services P.S If you are very new to Web Services, a good approach is to reasearch online first. Discover the different approaches i.e. Microsoft and "the rest of the world". Then start with this book and another on Microsoft as well. Launching straight into the book could be confusing. For the hackers, this book does not go in sufficient depth to start the next enterprise Web Services project. Nor does it compare the approaches with analogous specifications, e.g. CORBA UPDATE - Sept, 2003 - I recently received an email from a reader asking for an updated opinion of the book. There are now many more books on web services and also shifts in technical directions. The code given by this book will not work with the latest versions of Axis. Perhaps the authors will be coming up with a second edition.
Rating:
Summary: Samples
Review: There is an important thing missing in this book: complete samples. It is hard sometimes to understand what they are explaning since you just see a fragment of a WSDD, but not the classes or vice-versa. Since the book is already too long, the authors should have samples in the Internet. They even don't need to explain too much about these complete samples. Leave the developers to comment and validate them in Internet forums. In my view, samples will transform what now is just a so-so book in an excellent one.
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