Rating: 
Summary: 5 Stars from the author of _XML:A Manager's Guide_
Review: As a fellow author of a book targeted at managers, I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of their needs. Doug has done an admirable job of meeting these needs for Web services. This is a book for managers that want to have sucessful Web services projects.Doug starts by motivating the need for Web services with a utopian view of a near future business trip. Then he gives a thorough account of Web services technology basics at a level that even managers whose technical days are long in the past can understand. He ties this account back to the utopian business trip, showing how Web services overcome the technical obstacles to making it a reality. This book really shines in its extensive treatment of how managers can make their Web services projects successful. As a technologist, I have a tendency to underestimate the impact of "soft" project management issues, but Doug has not made this mistake. His years of experience clearly show through in his thoughtful and comprehensive treament of the forces pushing managers to use Web services, the potential obstacles to project completion, and how to overcome them.
Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars from the author of _XML:A Manager's Guide_
Review: As a fellow author of a book targeted at managers, I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of their needs. Doug has done an admirable job of meeting these needs for Web services. This is a book for managers that want to have sucessful Web services projects. Doug starts by motivating the need for Web services with a utopian view of a near future business trip. Then he gives a thorough account of Web services technology basics at a level that even managers whose technical days are long in the past can understand. He ties this account back to the utopian business trip, showing how Web services overcome the technical obstacles to making it a reality. This book really shines in its extensive treatment of how managers can make their Web services projects successful. As a technologist, I have a tendency to underestimate the impact of "soft" project management issues, but Doug has not made this mistake. His years of experience clearly show through in his thoughtful and comprehensive treament of the forces pushing managers to use Web services, the potential obstacles to project completion, and how to overcome them.
Rating:
Summary: Just Right For Management Types
Review: Frankly, I feel that some reviewers misunderstand the purpose of this book. In my opinion, for the right person, this book is a gem! Any of us who have had the challenge of explaining new and difficult concepts to managers who left technology back in the COBOL days or never were technologists should be grateful. As technologists, we forget just how much intimidating jargon we use and how many underlying assumptions we make when we explain things. As a software architect once said to me, "if I had more time, I'd make it simple." Clearly Barry has taken on the challenge of making it simple, and such efforts are incredibly valuable.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Overview of Web Services!
Review: I've always been a fan of Doug Barry. In the early Nineties Doug Barry focused on OO Databases. He produced a series of reports that compared every feature of every OO database. For awhile these magisterial volumes were the bible for any large company that wanted to buy an OO database. In this case, Doug presented the big picture by organizing the categories a team would use to analyze products, and then covered the details by presenting tables that showed exactly which features or functions each product had. Doug's latest book is Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures: The Savvy Manager's Guide.(Morgan Kaufmann, 2003). This book is written for architects and managers who are trying to figure out just what Web Services will mean for their organizations. It focuses on describing just what is involved in a Web Services Architecture and then explores the various options companies face as they think about how they might implement such an architecture. A quick glance at the contents gives you an idea of the scope: I. Service-Oriented Architecture Overview
1. A Business Trip in the Not-Too-Distant Future
2. Information Technology Used in This Trip
3. Service-Oriented Architectures and Web Services
4. Forces Affecting the Adoption of Web Services and Other Integration Techniques
5. Growing Impact of Web Services
6. Service-Oriented Architectures and Beliefs about Enterprise Architectures
7. Starting to Adopt a Service-Oriented Architecture
II. Managing Change Needed for a Service-Oriented Architecture
8. Change Will Happen
9. Tips for Managing Change Issues During Development
III. Creating Service-Oriented Architectures
10. Architectures at Each Stage of Adoption for Web Services
11. Architectural Options
12. Middle-Tier Architectures
13. Revisiting the Business Trip in the Not-Too-Distant Future
IV. Compendium of Software Technologies
14. Additional Specification Details
15. Quick Reference Guide Early on, Barry introduces a simple, high-level diagram of an architecture, and then follows through by using it throughout the text with great effect. Many complex options are easily compared or contrasted by a glance at one of the diagrams. Web Services depend heavily on XML and its various standards and Barry confronts that head on by providing an extensive reference guide to all the acronyms that we keep seeing, and that various specifications that tie them together. Anyone new to the world of XML would find it valuable just to buy this guide to get an overview of the world of XML. Most, however, will read the architecture sections, and be grateful that they can flip to the back whenever they want to check on an XML standard of which they are unsure. Given his nice treatment of middleware and the OMG XML standards (XMI, MOF, MDA, CWM), I was sorry that Barry didn't do a bit more to explain the OMG's Model Driven Architecture and explain how it could play a role in the evolving world of Web Service Architectures. This book covers a complex and rapidly expanding field in about 240 pages. Any manager or enterprise architect who is trying to develop an understanding of the basics and figure out the implications of web services should read this book. You won't find a better or more concise introduction to this important new area. Doug Barry has done it again!
Rating:
Summary: A Great Overview of Web Services!
Review: I've always been a fan of Doug Barry. In the early Nineties Doug Barry focused on OO Databases. He produced a series of reports that compared every feature of every OO database. For awhile these magisterial volumes were the bible for any large company that wanted to buy an OO database. In this case, Doug presented the big picture by organizing the categories a team would use to analyze products, and then covered the details by presenting tables that showed exactly which features or functions each product had. Doug's latest book is Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures: The Savvy Manager's Guide.(Morgan Kaufmann, 2003). This book is written for architects and managers who are trying to figure out just what Web Services will mean for their organizations. It focuses on describing just what is involved in a Web Services Architecture and then explores the various options companies face as they think about how they might implement such an architecture. A quick glance at the contents gives you an idea of the scope: I. Service-Oriented Architecture Overview
1.A Business Trip in the Not-Too-Distant Future
2.Information Technology Used in This Trip
3.Service-Oriented Architectures and Web Services
4.Forces Affecting the Adoption of Web Services and Other Integration Techniques
5.Growing Impact of Web Services
6.Service-Oriented Architectures and Beliefs about Enterprise Architectures
7.Starting to Adopt a Service-Oriented Architecture
II. Managing Change Needed for a Service-Oriented Architecture
8.Change Will Happen
9.Tips for Managing Change Issues During Development
III. Creating Service-Oriented Architectures
10.Architectures at Each Stage of Adoption for Web Services
11.Architectural Options
12.Middle-Tier Architectures
13.Revisiting the Business Trip in the Not-Too-Distant Future
IV. Compendium of Software Technologies
14.Additional Specification Details
15.Quick Reference Guide Early on, Barry introduces a simple, high-level diagram of an architecture, and then follows through by using it throughout the text with great effect. Many complex options are easily compared or contrasted by a glance at one of the diagrams. Web Services depend heavily on XML and its various standards and Barry confronts that head on by providing an extensive reference guide to all the acronyms that we keep seeing, and that various specifications that tie them together. Anyone new to the world of XML would find it valuable just to buy this guide to get an overview of the world of XML. Most, however, will read the architecture sections, and be grateful that they can flip to the back whenever they want to check on an XML standard of which they are unsure. Given his nice treatment of middleware and the OMG XML standards (XMI, MOF, MDA, CWM), I was sorry that Barry didn't do a bit more to explain the OMG's Model Driven Architecture and explain how it could play a role in the evolving world of Web Service Architectures. This book covers a complex and rapidly expanding field in about 240 pages. Any manager or enterprise architect who is trying to develop an understanding of the basics and figure out the implications of web services should read this book. You won't find a better or more concise introduction to this important new area. Doug Barry has done it again!
Rating: 
Summary: WebServices: dangerous material for inexperienced mind
Review: The Beef
I wish there were 0 stars reviews. I wish there was a "R" or "NR" rating for books that would reflect appropriateness for certain "age" in one's career. This book ("Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1558609067) is dangerous in content as it is in its trumpeting up of the web services.
The Good Stuff
The only one good line out of the book is on p97: there is more money to be made on the services provided using web services than on the web services technology itself - yup you heard da-man: web services are NBYATP (nothing but yet another transport protocol) - pretty much since the dawn of geeks we witnessed healthy flow of trumpeted transport protocols that ended up at most as a 10 year fab - with TCP having the only staying power as the building block of our virtual lives. you know the the RPCs, the HTTPs, the DCOMs, the CORBAs, the IIOPs, the SOAPs, ...
Educator, Educate thyself
The author needs to get an education from "COM+ and battle for middle tier" (http://www.objectwatch.com/ and http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00007FYHG) where master Sessions explains why the whole shebang about caching data in the middle tier, coding transaction coordination by hand, and using stateful services is a KOD (kiss of death) for systems where number of simultaneous users exceeds one's age.
The author also needs to read more from the anti-middle-tier-christ Tom Kyte (http://asktom.oracle.com/ and "Expert One on One" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590592433) and understand why one shouldn't try to do what databases do best - process massive sets of data, quickly.
Delusions
The dangerous chapters start around p127 (sure, stick your data inside a middle tier access rules so nobody other then your application can ever get to it) and totally enter delusions on page 175 referencing magical "50 times or more" improvement using caching in the middle tier (sure that works for magical systems where no updates take place - find ONE real system where this occurs).
Distributed Caching
the distributed caching problem hasn't been solved at the academic level, let alone implemented in any of the OOTB systems out there. The less-then perfect approaches have been implemented (e.g. Network File System, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Google File System) but with their own quirks and for their own domain. These implementations just prove that distributed caching product is an NP complete problem and will probably stay at least until the next generation.
Transaction Coordination
for those who think that web services architectures will solve the multi-source data update transaction coordination, boy are you in for a ride. Sure, you can pick up one of the standards that Roger Sessions artfully keeps spitting at in his monthly newsletter where he displays the Cassandra syndrome by telling the "big guys" that you can't cache the data in any non-authority tier (usually non-database tier), coordinate transaction with stateful services *and* provide large volume support at the same time. The experienced will tell you that the more data you cache in the middle tier, the less clients you can service. Stateful web services - eeeek - that's the screeching of my fingernails against the metal wall - find me one business that has one dedicated phonecall taking service rep per client - so why do you think that anyone can afford to have a single instance of web service for one client only?
Stateless is the king
the obvious answer is that stateless services are the king, but they bring unfriendly problems that you know and love from HttpSession days - one call one transaction, can't daisy-chain them unless there is a transaction processing monitor environment available, can't rollback after the call completes, etc etc etc.
Caveat - Open/XA
One thing I will concede - if you have Open/XA compliant data source under the hood exposed via WebServices spec that supports recoverable Open/XA-like stateless transaction protocol (business workflow coordination spec) - yes you can fix all that's wrong with web services - if you can afford decresed throughput (in any measurable sense) AND inability to perform set operations.
Row-by-row security
just try applying security to the underlying data source. did you ever try to implement a security based on iterative approach where each "row" of information is fetched, and security access check is perfomed? then you know this works for systems where you fetch a few rows. try doing a search across say 10-15 million rows and apply your row-by-row security policy and you'll see why I wouldn't leave home without Oracle and its Virtual Private Database technology in my pocket. I can swifth through 250,000 users, 1M+ discretionary access controls (DACs, a.k.a. ACL) and 1M+ mandatory access controls (MACs, or functional security), and 10M+ documents in under one second - and all of it transparently available to middle tier applications, Business Intelligence (BI) reporting systems, and command line interpreters. what are YOUR numbers Mr. row-by-row middle tier WebServices security?
Maybe, just maybe...
web services will always be relegated to systems where flexibility and data transformation capability trumps volume in terms of simultaneous users, transactions, and data volume (but then you can use XSLT, perl, awk, etc); in other words once the number of simultaneous users exceeds your age combined with transactions volume above number of your fingers per second, and you can say good night to your web services.
Anecdotal
as a good friend of mine once said: "These guys built an XML over TCP transaction processing platform. They proudly stated they can process 3 transactions per second. Our production system at the exchange written in C blasts through about 10,000 of the same transactions per second. who are they kidding?"
Closing Words of wisdom
and to paraphrase Tom Kyte and add to this conversation: "I can do about 3,000 logged (recoverable) transactions per second from 5,000 clients on my ***laptop*** using a Java-JDBC-Oracle 10g all-in-one combination and about 15,000 nonlogged (nonrecoverable)transactions per second using PL/SQL as a client. What kind of volume can you service your web service again?"
Rating:
Summary: Best overview book I've seen
Review: There must be hundreds of books on Web services, most of them with chapters that read like alphabet soup (UDDI, SOAP, WSDL, etc.). I've read quite a few of these books and it's awfully easy to get lost in the details. Douglas Barry's Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures, The Savvy Manager's Guide, does something else: it gives you a genuinely useful high-level view. Barry makes a very important distinction: Web services (the term we hear about so much) are connections. Services are what these connections deliver. What is important in the long run are not the connections (Web services) but the goods they will provide (services of many kinds). As Barry and many others see it, the future of software is in the services that will be used to plug information (data) and programming into service-oriented applications. Managing both the connections and the services will be a principal task of IT in the coming years, and it's Barry's contention that it can best be addressed by developing a service-oriented architecture. Much of the book is given over to discussing the nature of software architecture, what it means in the case of services, and how you would go about deciding what kind of architecture to use. This seems like esoteric stuff, but Barry does a very good job of removing excess jargon and inserting real-life analogies to clarify the topics. The author also uses his own experience and point of view to humanize what could be a mind-numbing onslaught of abstractions. I'm particularly happy that he discusses the difficulties of implementing Web services and a service-oriented architecture - a reality check that's sorely missing from many other books. Personally I might quibble with his assumption that the technical difficulties of Web services and particularly the problem of arriving at standards will shortly be resolved. But this is, ultimately, a matter of timing. That Web services are going to be important and probably pivotal for software is generally accepted. Barry does an excellent job of explaining what's involved, why it's important, and how to approach it-necessary background information for just about everybody involved in IT. Highly recommended
Rating:
Summary: Superb Job Barry!
Review: This book is exceptionally well done! I've written 3 books on Web development and I've written a number of articles on Web Services. I've also done a number of presentations on the subject at users groups around the country. I thought I understood the power and future of Web services, but Barry helped me understand the service-oriented architecture and how this what I really saw the promise in. Barry did an incredible job of bringing this topic all together. I found the book tremendously inspiring too! You won't be disappointed by the content in this book. You'll likely come away with 100 ideas too! Great job Barry!!! I can't wait to read your next book!!! Brad
Rating:
Summary: Superb Job Barry!
Review: This book is exceptionally well done! I've written 3 books on Web development and I've written a number of articles on Web Services. I've also done a number of presentations on the subject at users groups around the country. I thought I understood the power and future of Web services, but Barry helped me understand the service-oriented architecture and how this what I really saw the promise in. Barry did an incredible job of bringing this topic all together. I found the book tremendously inspiring too! You won't be disappointed by the content in this book. You'll likely come away with 100 ideas too! Great job Barry!!! I can't wait to read your next book!!! Brad
Rating:
Summary: Slam Dunk on Web Services
Review: This book is written but Cutter Consortium consultant Dave Barry and is packed with practical guidance on strategies around getting management to understand where they should be headed. This book should be purchased immediately by any manager undertaking a large web services project. Along with this book, I would also recommend the purchase of another book by the same publisher named Java Web Services Architecture for the development staff.
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