Advanced SOAP for Web Development

Rating:
Summary: Dont buy this book
Review: Don't bother buying this book. While its not terrible there are to many good books and web resources on SOAP to bother with this. It purports to be a book on advanced SOAP usage yet there seems to be nothing in it that is an advanced discussion of SOAP. The author really only spends 80 pages on SOAP it self-including preamble and non-related text. The rest of the book is UDDI, WSDL, HTTP, XML-RPC, BizTalk and like 167 pages or appendices which are rehashes of information that you can find on the web that are better presented.

The author also does not seem to know his topic very well and occasionally make statements such as SOAP may some day replace EDI which is silly since SOAP basically is a packaging protocol (he calls it a communication protocol which in some sense it is but only in a very general sense) basically defines how data is to be bundled, handled, and referenced. EDI deals with accountability, repudiation, complex exchange of data and programmatic information, is actually a standard, and is designed to model complex process while SOAP is not. Now if he said ebXML might replace EDI then I could take the statement seriously but SOAP will not be able to replace EDI. Its just does not have the capability and is not designed to.

Don't waste your money and your time on this book by the SAMS or Orielly books!

Rating:
Summary: Dont buy this book
Review: Don�t bother buying this book. While its not terrible there are to many good books and web resources on SOAP to bother with this. It purports to be a book on advanced SOAP usage yet there seems to be nothing in it that is an advanced discussion of SOAP. The author really only spends 80 pages on SOAP it self-including preamble and non-related text. The rest of the book is UDDI, WSDL, HTTP, XML-RPC, BizTalk and like 167 pages or appendices which are rehashes of information that you can find on the web that are better presented.

The author also does not seem to know his topic very well and occasionally make statements such as SOAP may some day replace EDI which is silly since SOAP basically is a packaging protocol (he calls it a communication protocol which in some sense it is but only in a very general sense) basically defines how data is to be bundled, handled, and referenced. EDI deals with accountability, repudiation, complex exchange of data and programmatic information, is actually a standard, and is designed to model complex process while SOAP is not. Now if he said ebXML might replace EDI then I could take the statement seriously but SOAP will not be able to replace EDI. Its just does not have the capability and is not designed to.

Don�t waste your money and your time on this book by the SAMS or Orielly books!

Rating:
Summary: Now I understand web services, .NET, SOAP, ...
Review: I've been hearing about SOAP and XML-RPC and .NET and interop and web services for months now, but I didn't *really* know what any of it was. Now I do. This book is GREAT! Simple, down-to-earth, intelligent coverage of SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, XML-RPC, web services, .NET, competing technologies, and some more. Lots of code samples and complete explanation of the code. It focuses on what precisely SOAP is, how it works, where and when to use it.

I read Livingston's Essential XML book, and I hoped this book would be as good. It is. As Homer Simpson says, Nine thumbs up (the one where he was a food critic)!

Rating:
Summary: Don't judge a book by its cover
Review: The cover says "Advanced" SOAP. This book is not.
I don't expect to see a book titled "Advanced" to simply
be a basic rehash of the specs that's readily available on
the internet.

And the author mentions that a certain topics aren't going to
be discussed because it's "...beyond the scope of this book."
I have a feeling, in fact, I'm pretty certain, that the word
"Advanced" was put on the cover as a ploy to sell more books.
At the price, it's not worth it at all. Maybe for a lot cheaper, it would be useful a useful companion to the spec. But why would you even spend that much on this book? You can just print the spec out yourself. But nothing more.

Rating:
Summary: Don't judge a book by its cover
Review: The cover says "Advanced" SOAP. This book is not.
I don't expect to see a book titled "Advanced" to simply
be a basic rehash of the specs that's readily available on
the internet.

And the author mentions that a certain topics aren't going to
be discussed because it's "...beyond the scope of this book."
I have a feeling, in fact, I'm pretty certain, that the word
"Advanced" was put on the cover as a ploy to sell more books.
At the price, it's not worth it at all. Maybe for a lot cheaper, it would be useful a useful companion to the spec. But why would you even spend that much on this book? You can just print the spec out yourself. But nothing more.

Rating:
Summary: Not an Advanced SOAP Book
Review: This book is meant for people who do not have web technology background and want to get some genernal knowledge about SOAP, XML, WSDL, and UDDI.

The author repeats the sentence "We will not be going into more detail here" for many, many important topics. It is definitely not an advanced SOAP book.

It seems that the author does not understand .NET very well. In Chapter 1, he explains the function of CLR engine as compiling IL code into Windows or Unix based code. Why UNIX? Will Microsoft .NET ever support Unix platform? He wrote the entire Chapter 11 trying to talk about BizTalk server. However, the very first sentence of Chapter 11 he wrote: "Chances are good that you've never used Microsoft's BizTalk server and that you never will". What is the point of writing this? In this whole chapter, he did not even mention that the most important functions of BizTalk are:
1. transform many different E*Commerce message formats (EDI, xCBL, cXML, SAP IDoc) into Microsoft XML doc.
2. XLANG scheduling and Orchestration.
3. Interface with Commerce Server and trading partners for catalog publishing and buying/selling.

The index of the book is not well organized either, missing lots of important references.

The book does not have enough diagrams to support the author's ideas or to describe the relationship among web technology components. You really need to read line by line to understand what he is trying to tell you about.

Final suggestion: Ask yourself what kind of SOAP book you are looking for.