UDDI: Building Registry-based Web Services Solutions

Rating:
Summary: Deeper understandig and registries
Review: Several books in the market gloss over the UDDI technology. It is usually an addendum to a book about Web services or service oriented architecture. It was a pleasant surprise to see that there is a book dedicated to this topic. I firmly believe that until registries such as UDDI become commonplace, the true vision of SOA cannot be achieved. The authors make several good points regarding this. I also liked the examples used in the book -- more real-world than registering hello world services.

It's bit longer read, but totally worth it when you are writing and registering more complex Web services than Echo and 20-min delayed stock quote.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book that puts business registries in perspective
Review: There are several resources that take a "reference book" approach when explaining a technology. While that solves the immediate problem of getting syntax right, it rarely helps in getting proper understanding about how a technology is suppose work within a solution. Such books also fail to provide an understanding of how and when to employ the specific technology while designing and implementing a solution to a specific problem. I found that this book has refreshingly taken a different approach --- looking at a technology from architect or technologist perspective. Sure, it has devoted about a third of the book to UDDI APIs, a section that will be useful for developers, but at the same time, it also provides several insights for senior technical members of a team. For example, the five usage models for business registries in corporate environment covers practically all scenarios in which a business registry-based application can be created. Some of the discussion, such as that on Web services ecosystem or on vendor-customer relationships and role of business registries in those is even useful for IT and business managers.

Overall, I find it a complete book on UDDI -- one that caters to the needs of not only developers, but also senior technology staff in a team as well as IT and business managers for whom registry technologies are relevant.

Rating:
Summary: Low-density book on UDDI
Review: This book spends a tremendous amount of pages per idea. There is a lot of code in the main text (should be on a digital medium or at least the appendix). And this code is even repeated in .Net and Java.

Anyhow:
It is a fast and swift read.
You get some examples.
You do find things you do not find in other books.

My best recommendation for UDDI is still the corresponding chapter in Eric Newcomer's Web Services book.

This book is part of the Hewlett-Packard Professional books series. Except for the cover design, this is (luckily) not noticeable at all. Well the company employs the authors.