Rating: 
Summary: Now it all makes sense!
Review: I bought this book hoping to figure out what all of this Web Service stuff is about. Scott writes for MSDN, so I figured that he must have a clue. As a prior reviewer noted, Scott goes into detail about the specifications. I read the SOAP spec and it is fairly difficult to read. Yes, he follows the specs fairly closely but he explains things in easy to understand terms and does a far better job explaining things than the SOAP or WSDL specs do. I've been working on a web service for the past month now. Not surprisingly, I've had to dig into SOAP messages and WSDL whenever I was doing my interoperability testing. Thanks to Scott's book, I can actually understand what I'm reading. The case study is a good read as well. Make sure to read it if only for the architectural guidance. Almost everybody on my team bought a copy. Do yourself a favor. If you are starting a project that exposes or consumes a Web Service, include copies of this book for all devs in the budget. It'll be worthwhile.
Rating: 
Summary: Poorly organized
Review: I felt this book was poorly organized, and lacking in the type of information I wanted. Chapter 1 is a history of the computer, starting with the abacus. (I'm not kidding.) Chapter 2 is an overview of XML, which might have been useful except that this book is clearly not aimed at people unfamiliar with XML. Chapter 3 is a rehash of the SOAP specification. While potentially interesting, this chapter (like the specification itself) is a blow-by-blow discussion of very minute details of the SOAP syntax. This chapter would have been better as an appendix. Better yet, just provide a hyperlink to the SOAP specification for those who are interested. The remainder of the book is made up of two example applications and some "oh by the way" disccusions of issues more or less related to SOAP itself. Chapter 4 discusses a "simple" SOAP application in great detail. This was the chapter I found most nearly useful. Chapters 5 and 6 cover WSDL and UDDI, not SOAP. Chapter 7 talks about vendor-specific implementations of SOAP--a chapter that is already totally outdated. Chapter 8 through the end discusses a single large application built using soap. For me, Chapter 4 was the only one that came close to providing real value. In summary, this is yet another "talk about anything to fill up the pages" book. If you remove 100+ pages of raw source code, 5 chapters that give general introductions to the history of the computer, XML, WSDL, and UDDI, you wind up with about 40 pages of poorly organized, scattered writings about SOAP itself. Not worth the [the money], in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly organized
Review: I felt this book was poorly organized, and lacking in the type of information I wanted. Chapter 1 is a history of the computer, starting with the abacus. (I'm not kidding.) Chapter 2 is an overview of XML, which might have been useful except that this book is clearly not aimed at people unfamiliar with XML. Chapter 3 is a rehash of the SOAP specification. While potentially interesting, this chapter (like the specification itself) is a blow-by-blow discussion of very minute details of the SOAP syntax. This chapter would have been better as an appendix. Better yet, just provide a hyperlink to the SOAP specification for those who are interested. The remainder of the book is made up of two example applications and some "oh by the way" disccusions of issues more or less related to SOAP itself. Chapter 4 discusses a "simple" SOAP application in great detail. This was the chapter I found most nearly useful. Chapters 5 and 6 cover WSDL and UDDI, not SOAP. Chapter 7 talks about vendor-specific implementations of SOAP--a chapter that is already totally outdated. Chapter 8 through the end discusses a single large application built using soap. For me, Chapter 4 was the only one that came close to providing real value. In summary, this is yet another "talk about anything to fill up the pages" book. If you remove 100+ pages of raw source code, 5 chapters that give general introductions to the history of the computer, XML, WSDL, and UDDI, you wind up with about 40 pages of poorly organized, scattered writings about SOAP itself. Not worth the [the money], in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Great book and help
Review: I recently bought this book to learn about how things really worked. I was happy to see that the book avoided a lot of the fluff seen in other texts and that it explained the protocols well. I had a couple of questions and wrote to the author with them. Scott replied promptly and gave me some good advice. I higly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Top to Bottom coverage
Review: I've read about SOAP and Web Services from other books and have always come out with questions about how certain ideas work "under the hood". I feel that I really understand a concept if I know how it works at the wire level. The problem with many of the books out there is that they give you a very good coverage of the technology but not much insight into the fundamentals. Scott Seely's book on the other hand gives you a very balanced view of SOAP. It discusses XML schemas and the SOAP messaging protocol. Immediately, Scott jumps into implementing a SOAP server by hand which is essential to understanding how SOAP really works (and to learn to appreciate the need for SOAP frameworks that are currently available on various systems). The book is worth just for this chapter, if nothing else. The case study of an auction system puts a nice finishing touch, rounding off a comprehensive top to bottom treatment of SOAP.
Rating:
Summary: Top to Bottom coverage
Review: I've read about SOAP and Web Services from other books and have always come out with questions about how certain ideas work "under the hood". I feel that I really understand a concept if I know how it works at the wire level. The problem with many of the books out there is that they give you a very good coverage of the technology but not much insight into the fundamentals. Scott Seely's book on the other hand gives you a very balanced view of SOAP. It discusses XML schemas and the SOAP messaging protocol. Immediately, Scott jumps into implementing a SOAP server by hand which is essential to understanding how SOAP really works (and to learn to appreciate the need for SOAP frameworks that are currently available on various systems). The book is worth just for this chapter, if nothing else. The case study of an auction system puts a nice finishing touch, rounding off a comprehensive top to bottom treatment of SOAP.
Rating:
Summary: Great Web Services coverage!
Review: I've read the other positive reviews on this topic and they already say quite a bit about the book-- explains SOAP well, good XML primer, yadda yadda yadda. I learned quite a bit from this book. The thing this guy does that many authors don't do is he explains all the basics (fairly common) and then shows how everythiing works across C#, VB 6, and Java on *nix and Windows. Most authors cop out and stick with only Linux or only Windows. None of the books I've seen build an example that crosses the bridge. Before buying this title, I highly recommend that you check out the At Your Service column on MSDN. Scott's a co-author on that column. If you like the writing style in his columns, you'll love the book. For more in depth writing, consider searching for his name and look for more articles. That's what I did.
Rating:
Summary: I am sorry for the author, he should spend more time on this
Review: It's understandable that the author donot have much time in
writing this book. But I think both the publisher and the
author should be serious on writing a book. Overall, it's not professional!
Rating:
Summary: Great spec explanations!
Review: Just a couple of quick comments:
1. The brief history that explains why SOAP was invented was handy in understanding where the need for SOAP came from.
2. Great job on explaining the only XML you need to know in order to understand SOAP. So far, the content has been dead on.
3. The book has given me a good understanding of how all this stuff works. I grabbed this one because of Scott's interop article he did for MSDN. I figured that he had to learn the info somewhere-- this book must be the location. I hope he revs this one soon after SOAP v1.2 comes out. Hopefully, he'll also include info on the new WS-xxx specs that Microsoft is pumping out. If anyone can explain this stuff well, it's Scott!
Rating:
Summary: Cross platform makes sense
Review: My boss wanted me to show him that something complex could be done using XML Web Services. I took about a day and a half to setup the case study from this book (case study is an auction web site that has a Linux box talking to Windows servers running both the SOAP toolkit and VS .NET Beta 2). He and his boss were amazed that something like that could be put together using XML. As an added bonus, the explanations of SOAP, WSDL, and the rest made it easy for me to explain what was going on under the covers. Scott has some great stuff on MSDN as well. To get a feeling for his writing style, just look for his name there.
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