Professional ASP.NET Web Services

Rating:
Summary: This book is for EXPERIENCED programmers
Review: I read the book several times. I did some of the examples. The examples worked with no changes necessary. On the [web page], the book has an errata list, which is pretty small. The source code for C# and VB are on the wrox website. This book is for EXPERIENCED programmers. Don't even try to read it if you have no prior knowledge of web services.

The book has an excellent introduction to ASP.NET for web services. It probably is worth just going over the first two chapters to get a flavor of web services. Word of caution, I downloaded the VB samples, and they were a bit buggy. If you are a C# developer, the code in the book was fine. The VB code was not...

Rating:
Summary: This book is for EXPERIENCED programmers
Review: I read the book several times. I did some of the examples. The examples worked with no changes necessary. On the [web page], the book has an errata list, which is pretty small. The source code for C# and VB are on the wrox website. This book is for EXPERIENCED programmers. Don't even try to read it if you have no prior knowledge of web services.

The book has an excellent introduction to ASP.NET for web services. It probably is worth just going over the first two chapters to get a flavor of web services. Word of caution, I downloaded the VB samples, and they were a bit buggy. If you are a C# developer, the code in the book was fine. The VB code was not...

Rating:
Summary: Top-Down approach is very useful
Review: I recommend this book because I find it easy to read. The top down approach helped me understand the subject matter. Introduction chapters were very helpful to get me started and the details came in later chapters. I had no issues with C# code examples.

I recommend this book because I find it easy to read. The top down approach helped me understand the subject matter. Introduction chapters were very helpful to get me started and the details came in later chapters. I had no issues with C# code examples.

This book is well organized, I liked the introduction chapters that start you at the 10,000 foot level and then the later chapters dug deep down into details. This Top-Down approach was very useful to me to understand the material.

The first few chapters discuss the major components of Web Services to give the reader a good understanding of the architecture involved. The major components discussed were organized in conceptual layers such as the Transport, the Data encoding (XML and XML Schema), SOAP, WSDL and UDDI. Also some history and other technologies were compared. Examples of Web Services were given immediately to show how easy it is to write Web Services in Note Pad and better yet in Visual Studio .NET.

Chapter 3 explained how to consume a Web Service once it is built.

Starting with chapter 4 the conceptual layers were explained in greater details

WSDL and all the sections involved, Wire Formats like SOAP and Custom Techniques.

Finally Web Services Discovery (UDDI) was discussed in chapter 7. All well done.

More advanced subjects were discussed starting with chapter 8 like Design techniques, Asynchronous programming, State management, Transactions, Data Caching, Authentication and SOAP Security. Exposing Data and Serialization etc. Well done also.

I liked reading the case studies using BizTalk Server, Passport-Style Authentication Services, and Distributed Processing, you can find them at the end of the book. I was more interested in the Passport-Style Authentication and Distributed Processing. I did not have time for any examples on the case studies.

Over all this book is very good, and I strongly recommend it. This book explained the material well using the right approach. I found few errors here and there but I have not found a book that is perfect. Most of the examples that I had time to try worked well. This book is NOT only for intermediate and advanced users because if you are a beginner to Web Services and like to be challenged then this book is also for you. ---Reviewed by Gus Aawar

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Book (With A Couple of Reservations)
Review: The best book that I've ever seen for Web Services. This book covers all about Web Services and the advanced topics such as Caching and Security are the highlight of this book. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive coverage
Review: The first few chapters teach you the basics, most of which I knew already, but it is the later chapters which are really great. The chapter on SOAP security (a subject about which I confess I knew very little) taught me everything I am ever likely to need or want to know about that subject. There's also loads of great examples to get you going. To sum up - it's great!

Rating:
Summary: Teaches how to develop real-world Web Services using ASP.NET
Review: This is by far one of the best books on implementig Web Services in ASP .NET and the reason is simple: it addresses and provides examples on how to deal with inherent Web Services issues such as security and state management. In most other web services books I've read the chapters about security (if any) simply say it is an issue and talk about general concepts about security. This book is an exception to that. The examples on this book will teach you:
* How to use SOAP headers for authentication.
* How to map Windows accounts to impersonate users.
* How to enable session management for persisting state across different Web service methods.

Perhaps one of the big reasons I also liked the book is because the examples where in C#, whereas most other ASP .NET books use VB.NET by default. It'd be nice to see a second edition of this book covering examples on how to use the WS-Security standard using the recently released Microsoft Web Services Development Kit (WSDK).

Rating:
Summary: Good for solid understanding
Review: Together with Professional C# Web Services, also from Wrox, these books will give you a solid base to really understand Web Services and Remoting. The basics are quite simple but you will also learn some useful advanced topics. I've always liked the Wrox style of writing, I think it's easy to read and follow the code examples. The only criticism is the number of authors. Some smaller parts are repeated and the style is not always consistent.

Rating:
Summary: very good for .net web tecnologies
Review: very good for .net web tecnologies