Rating: 
Summary: Amazingly useful
Review: This book is one of the most useful references I've come across. It is environment-independent, provides a concise approach to web services architecture, and is filled with examples. The examples are augmented by the author's web site, which guarantees that errata, updates and new artifacts are up-to-date and fresh.I like the way the author breaks down a web architecture into a collection of services, which is the way it should be done, and the time and care he lavished on providing examples. While the examples are somewhat lite, they are more than sufficient to spark a developer's imagination. For the architect this book gives a complete framework and an array of example services. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I was so impressed that I ordered copies for every developer and architect on my team. This is our first reference, and is often cited in design reviews and code inspections. If you're involved in web architecture or development this book belongs on your short list.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good
Review: This book is pretty good. I own a copy of it, and there's some good information in it, even though it's starting to get a little outdated at this point. And ignore the review by the person who said this book "is horrible" and suggested getting Java Web Services Architecture instead. That person *is* the author of that book, and is just trying to drum up sales. I've seen that book, too, and it's okay, but not great.
Rating: 
Summary: A very confusing, misleading and badly written book
Review: This book is probably one of the worst technical books I have ever bought. I wonder if the editors actually read the text. The book starts off with an introduction to Web services which describes them using all sorts of confusing terminology. It uses phrases like sharing content, sharing processes, sharing information and then goes into presentation layers followed by business layers, and wastes 10 pages talking about what a shared process is. I eventually worked out that in fact all the author was trying to say is that a Web service acts like a Remote Procedure call with a request and response. This is simple and only should have required a few lines to explain. And in any case shared processes are nothing to do with Web services. Even worse the author then compares Web services to CORBA and says they both allow code re-use. Does the author know what CORBA is I wonder...The point he should have made is that Web services are stateless and CORBA is a pure inter-object protocol with object activation and sessions. They are not really comparable. The book gets much worse than this and delves into all sorts of meaningless diagrams about architecture. If you want to find out about Web services go to some of the good sites on the web, but don't waste your money and more importanly time on this book.
Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to Web Services
Review: This book provides a good, detailed introduction to Web Services, from an architects point of view. Allows one to identify where these technologies could be applied, and how to apply them. The Java examples are good. Explains the various technologies quite well. Buy it !
Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your time on this one
Review: This book was so booring that I gave up after reading half of it. It gave me almost no useful information at all. I have not had any practical use of this book so far.
Rating:
Summary: A little disappointing...
Review: This is a decent book if you are interested in a theoretical treatment of web services but not in building systems that produce and consume web services. Yes, there are examples, but because the book is not tied to a specific web service platform it is not well grounded. I've been working with web services for over a year now. It is easy to speculate about web services architecture in the abstract. However, when you pick a platform to develop web services on, you quickly discover that you have to keep compromising your architecture because of various limitations. This book is unrealistic: it ignores many of the constraints of the real world. Perhaps it is meant for architects that don't have to actually build any software.
Rating:
Summary: Are you kidding?
Review: This is not a book for technically oriented people looking for answers on web services. Questions you have on things such as scalability, security, and business models are either not covered or are glossed over at a 50k foot level. Little or no examples are given that will stand up to a developers scrutiny. There are no new ideas here. None. There are no solutions to the important questions here. None. This is yet another book in the "Expert's Series". I've bought a number of books recently by Apress. For most of these, I have wondered if the author learned the subject in order to write the book. I am convinced that this is the case here.
Rating:
Summary: Long-winded, tied to Websphere and VAJ
Review: This is not a good choice if you want to learn how to write web services quickly. The book is long-winded, covering 280 pages before starting the first example of an actual web service. It also uses an obsolete version of IBM's Websphere (v3.5) for its examples. There are several pages of screen shots showing how to use Websphere v3.5 to create and deploy a web service even though the author says "This is not a book on Websphere". Make up your mind. What is even worse is that he wastes several pages showing how to use the ultra-bloated Visual Age for Java to develop web services. One goal of web services is to be implementation neutral so tying the explanation of web services development to particular tools goes against the spirit of web services. On the positive side the author has some useful insights and tips on the technologies involved in web services. He also provides a web site with working web services.
Rating:
Summary: Clear, structured and coherent
Review: This well written book starts with a coherent definition of what web service are and how they fit within the framework of a coherent architecture. I like the way the author uses terminology to which I can relate to explain the inner workings of services. I am intimately familiar with processes, procedure calls and the such, so the examples and illustrations used to describe the models were crystal clear. I also liked the layered approach to architecture, which is the hallmark of a well-thought out design; as well as the distinction between physical and logical design. In addition, the analogies made using CORBA, for example, to underscore the fact that a well designed architecture is a structured collection of services, developed as discrete components or objects, reinforces the notion of reusability and highlights the importance taking a component-based software engineering approach to web services architecture. The chapters devoted to XML (technical primer and using XML) were clear explanations of this important facet of web architecture. If you are coming from a legacy background or are attempting to web-enable systems in support of enterprise application integration, these two chapters will get you quickly up-to-speed. Chapter 5, Web Services Models, is the heart of this book and should be carefully read by architects and the design team; chapter 7, Building a Web Services Workflow, is essential reading for functional analysts, the creative and technical members of the design team, and QA. A nice touch is how the author used a hotel reservation system as an example to marry theory with a realistic web-based application. As a non-developer I thought the way the author kept the level of abstraction above actual code (although example code is provided) and made examples independent of any particular development environment was a masterful way of describing the process of architecture without getting bogged down into details that have more to do with coding than design or seeing the grand scheme. Too many authors are developers at heart and cannot resist details that lose the attention of the intended audience - architects in the case of this book. He wisely left out the gory details associated with the build phase of a web project, and also showed wisdom by not attempting to get lost in scalability, performance or other issues that would merit another book to cover. As such this book is focused, and provides a structured and coherent framework for component-based software engineering approach to web architecture. If you or your team is not committed to doing up-front design and architecture you may not find this book very useful. However, if you want to see how employing sound architectural principles to web systems design can be done, or are working in a mature development environment, you will find this book well written and the approach consistent with best practices in software engineering and architecture.
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