Product Description

For many Java developers, Web services appeared to come out of nowhere. Its advantages are clear: Web services are platform-independent, language-agnostic, can easily be tunnelled through firewalls, object-oriented, and tend to be loosely coupled (all owing more flexible application development). But these advantages have been obscured by a cloud of hype and a proliferation of jargon that are difficult to penetrate. What are SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, and JAXM? To say nothing of JAXR, tModels, category bags, WSFL, and other friends? And assuming that you understand what they are, how do you do anything with them? Do they live up to their promises? Are they really the future of network computing, or a dead end? This volume offers the experienced Java developer a way into the Web Services world. It aims to help explain what's going on, what the technologies mean and how they relate, and shows Java developers how to put them to use to solve real problems. It covers what's real and what isn't and what the technologies are really supposed to do, and how they do it. The book shows how to use SOAP to perform remote method calls and message passing; how to use WSDL to describe the interface to a Web service or understand the interface of someone else's service; and how to use UDDI to advertise (publish) and look up services in each local or global registry. It also discusses security issues, interoperability issues, integration with other Java enterprise technologies like EJB; the work being done on the JAXM and JAX-RPC packages, and integration with Microsoft's .NET services. The Web services picture is still taking shape; there are many platforms and APIs to consider, and many conflicting claims from different marketing groups. And although Web services are inherently language-independent, the fit between the fundamental principles on which Java and Web services are based means that Java will almost certainly be the predominant language for web services development.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #627675 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 276 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
At the end of the day, Web Services aren't hard to conceptualise. Implementation is another story, however. Java Web Services does a very good job of dispersing the confusing terminology (and obfuscating hype) and showing you exactly how to do Web Services work in Java. This doesn't sound like a revolutionary concept, but unfortunately it is. David Chappell and Tyler Jewell have comfortably fit into less than 250 pages what others have not done as well in twice as much space.

Take Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) work as an example. UDDI exists to help software locate other software that does what it wants. How do you do that? Chappell and Jewell present two concise program listings--a client and a server--that show how to do an UDDI lookup. They then refine their code by using a third-party API that makes the work easier. Similarly pragmatic attention goes to Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), in which they show how to create a message, populate it with XML, make an attachment if necessary and send it on its way. You'll not find a lot of frills or conceptual explanations (though there are enough "why" sections to ensure that you're not just typing recipes blindly)--the emphasis is on writing Java code that interacts with Web Services protocols and standards. --David Wall

Topics covered: how to write Web Services software in Java, with respect to Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and Web Services Description Language (WSDL). There's also coverage of inter-process communication under JAX-RPC and ways to implement security. All the low-level stuff is here. Look elsewhere for architecture and design information.

Lori Piquet, Editor-in-Chief, DevX, April 2002
This is probably one of the best references you can invest in if you're ready to start building Web services in Java right away.

Bay Area Web Services User Group Newsletter, May 2002
I guarantee if you read this you will be on your way to becoming one of the web services elite.

Customer Reviews

lots of XML but out of date
This book has a lot of detail on SOAP messages and how to build them. Personally, I felt that I didn't want to read a lot of XML in raw form, but the detail was there.

Unfortunately, since this book was published, the Apache web services implementation has changed to Apache Axis. So the code fragments are no longer working. Not a terrible problem as the concepts are still OK but a lot of the new features of Axis aren't there.

The complete web services guide
This is an excellent book. Web Services is a very new area of distributed computing, and as anyone who works in a client server environment will know, setting up your environment is half the battle. This book walks you through the world of web services, from setting up your environment, to publishing the web service using UDDI.
From my experience in web services i have come to the conclusion that there are 2 ways to connect to a service, a direct connection using the apache.soap api, or using WSDL to create stubs and skeletons...very similar to CORBA and IDL. This book covers both methods extensively.
If you want to buy one book to learn the ins and outs of web services, then this is the book for you.

An OLD book!
Now a dated book, it came out (and has an appropriate tone for the time) when web services were really just getting started - there was allot of hype and not always much delivery. So, the book talks about the "could be", "should be" and uses Apache SOAP for its Java examples. That project has moved on (turned into Apache Axis) so the examples aren't of any use. Having said that the book is a good introduction into things (although lacked clear explanations and depth at times).

My advice; there are better books out there, more recent and with better explanations. I found this book fairly dry and needlessly difficult to read (for example, not explaining basic terms when first encountered).

But thats just me...