Professional Java Web Services

Rating:
Summary: Must Buy ....
Review: I find the book very good , filtering out actual information from hype associated with the latest buzz words like Web Services , UDDI , WSDL etc.

It is a book meant for people who have good grasp on J2EE technologies and kind-of Java gurus and would like to move on to the next technological break-through(I really call Web Services a break-through).

The book takes the readers in a very logical journey, explaining the concepts nicely. Chapters I found very useful include :

1) "Health Care Case study"

2) "Web Service Enabling J2EE Applications"

3) "SAP and Web Services" that talks about the SAP Java Connector(JCo).

To keep things short and simple the book is an excellent buy for Java developers wanting to move to Web Services....

Rating:
Summary: Confusing coverage of SOAP, WSDL, UDDI....Helpful Samples
Review: I have some gripes about this book:

*First of all, the explanation of SOAP, WSDL, UDDI gets quite confusing and convoluted. I had a hard time understanding the explanations given about these protocols, especially about how they are structured.

*The samples that cover Apache SOAP require the IBM web services toolkit 2.4. However, you can only download the 3.0 version of this toolkit from the IBM website. The 3.0 version is not compatible with the 2.4 version. In essence, you cannot run these samples.

*The security section of this book is only theoretical. No samples. (The reason given was that most of the security technologies are still in development).

Other than these gripes, this book will give you a broad understanding of the java web services so that hopefully, you can get started on implementing/deploying this new technology.

Rating:
Summary: Does Wrox employ proofreaders?
Review: Perhaps my expectations are too great, but what I look for in a book is the ability to learn something by following reasonable instructions. This book's source code is pretty good and plentiful... but read on.

Where the trouble comes in is when you actually try to follow the setup and execution steps. Such a case is in the beginning of the book when one is supposedly shown how to configure Tomcat, SOAP and their related libraries... oh, and the wrong URLs. Do yourself a favor: just tear the pages out. Even when you get to the point where your first web service is deployed, you still can't get around the error messages until you do something which the book should most certainly have warned the reader about: restart Tomcat.

Look, I'm no expert, and this is the reason why I bought the book. In all fairness, it's likely that someone from Wrox will actually go through the steps himself and bang his head on the desk enough so that the second edition will deserve more credence in its instruction.

It was probably too late for the Java Web Services Developer Pack to be included in the book, so don't buy this book if you intend to focus on the pack, unless you're lucky enough to know the significant differences. Sorry gang, but this book went to the press prematurely.

Other than that, I still recommend it, with the aforementioned caveats having been considered. Wrox: replace your proofreaders... pleeeeeeez. I'm sure that the authors meant well and I still managed to learn quite a lot.

Rating:
Summary: Contents obsolete at publishing date
Review: Thinking this would be a good book to be introduced into web services I ordered this book. It contains several chapters with examples. One chapter (7) inticed me to try the example. But when I downloaded the required software (IBM's wstk), it was a newer version. The chapter is not compatible with the new software, and that for a book that is available on the shelves for only two months.

I think it is a good book, should rate it on four stars. The use of outdated examples makes me rate it on (only) two stars.

Rating:
Summary: Good breadth, bad depth on Java Web Services
Review: This is a good book to familiarizing on how to implement web services using Java. What I found most valuable about this book is the coverage of AXIS, CapeStudio, SAP and J2EE.
As most other Web Services books, the chapters on SOAP, WSDL, UDDI and Web Services Security are very general and take up half of the book. If you're already familiar with these concepts these chapters are useless. Also as most web services related technologies are quickly evolving I would find this book quite outdated today.

Rating:
Summary: Typical Wrox product.....
Review: Wrox books tend to occupy a particular niche in the market. Wrox' strategy seems to be to be early into the marketplace with a book on a bleeding edge topic. Their 'Early Adopter' series is particularly aimed at this market, but so are many of their books. If something is wrong or superceded, Wrox will publish another book on the same topic, usually a bunch more books on the topic.

Wrox also tends to publish books with many authors. This makes their books spotty, though in theory it ensures expert knowledge of a wide range of topics. In practice I don't find it so. Certain chapters in any Wrox book will be effectively unusable.

The speed comes at a price in terms of proofreading and to the useful life of the books they publish. When I purchase a Wrox book I know what I'm getting. It's a book with a short useful life which will help get me started quickly on bleeding edge topics at the cost of some frustration and skullsweat.

Typically I will replace a Wrox book later on my learning curve when O'Reilly and other more careful publishers come out with their books. There is a place for books like these. Even if they aren't 100% accurate, they are timely and are rarely completely useless. I usually don't recommend them for beginning technologists for that reason.

This book was useful when I bought it but has now almost reached it's sell-by date.