Architecting Web Services [Paperback]

William L. Oellermann Jr. (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1893115585 | ISBN-13: 978-1893115583 | Publication Date: October 15, 2001 | Edition: 1st

Architecting Web Services is targeted toward developers and technical architects who have heard about, and even started to work with, Web services. The book starts with a background on the evolution of Web services and their significance to future collaborative efforts via the Internet. It then reveals the architecture for Web services and the various relationships that can be established through their consumption.

Following a short technical primer on XML and related technologies, the Web services model is outlined to illustrate the decisions that have to be made in the areas of presentation, interface, and security before the design is even started. Topics ranging from content to state management to system infrastructures are discussed to help you understand the options and the pitfalls when developing robust Web services.

The life cycle of implementing Web services from start to finish is illustrated, taking existing processes and exposing their functionality through Web services. Examples extend both Java and COM objects as Web services before exposing an entire hotel reservation system through a Web services workflow. These exercises are followed by three application scenarios that consume these Web services, again with both Java and Visual Basic/ASP examples. Discussions cover the design, implementation, and testing of each solution to ensure a successful result.

Finally, the book takes a look ahead at the future of Web services by examining both the current strategies of the primary vendors and the standards initiatives that are presently under way. A companion website provides all the source code, and hosts the Web services and sample applications introduced in the book.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"..is the best serious treatment of Web services I've read to date." Alan Zeichick, SD Times -- SD Times

"In his chapter on web-services models...since the issues raised here are fundamental for designing robust services." Martin Heller, BYTE.com -- BYTE.com

About the Author

William L. Oellerman, Jr. is the chief architect for Ericsson's eBusiness Solution Center. He has more than nine years of experience in the IT industry in both a corporate and consulting capacity. He has worked extensively with XML- and web-based applications in enterprise settings, including production applications for integration and e-commerce at Fortune 500 companies such as American Greetings, Citigroup, Ericsson, and Zale Corporation. Having grown up professionally with the Internet and having earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Dallas, William has a balanced background that makes him well-suited to recognize the value of software engineering while embracing the potential of the Web. This background and his passion for problem solving and delivering solutions to address real issues compelled him to make the web services paradigm his primary focus.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1st edition (October 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893115585
• ISBN-13: 978-1893115583
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,782,204 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally! Something for Architects, October 18, 2001

By 

John Sim (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Architecting Web Services (Paperback)

One thing that I really liked about this book was the fact that it was not your typical "Here's how you build a Web Service and you can learn how in less than a lunch break!" This book is for those who are serious about building Web Services. Not only does William show you different implementations, but gives you the architectural guidance that most (if not all) other books on the subject lack. This book is definitely not a re-hash of some help file or article, but a clear, concise way of designing and architecting Web Service solutions. Not only do I have a book for myself, but have another one for my team I work with. This is one book you must get if you are serious about building Web Services.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Web services: beyond standards and tools, November 8, 2001

By 

Harry Tennant (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Architecting Web Services (Paperback)

There have been a lot of books on Web services and related technologies lately. Most of them are at about the same level of abstraction: focused on SOAP, UDDI and WSDL and the particulars about .NET, J2EE, etc. Those are good and useful books but there is also a need for books that get unstuck from that level. Architecting Web Services is one of those. Just as the name states, it discusses architecture more than other books out there. The implementation examples are oriented toward understanding principles rather than technical nuance (the geekier books are better for that). I also found the final chapter useful in summarizing the state of standards and product directions.

Consider this book if you're responsible not just for programming Web services but if you are responsible for, well...architecting Web services.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not about architecture or about web services, September 20, 2002

By 

MrWhooHoo "WhooHoo" (Berkeley, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Architecting Web Services (Paperback)

There is a serious need for a book on architecting web services (WS) application. Unfortunately, this is not it. The author ignores standard industry architectures and protocols. He develops his own, non-standard technology architecture. He dismisses standards - essential for interoperability and reusability - in a short chapter at the end of the book. If you want to understand how to architect web services, and even how they work, you will have to look elsewhere.

The emerging architectural paradigm for web service applications is based on SOA - Service-Oriented Architectures. This matches the approach taken to the industry technology standards which are designed to promote loosely coupled, distributed, componentized applications built from services. This architecture is closely related to the emergence of business modeling using domain ontologies which leverage the semantic web to help discovery of appropriate services. These may seem like academic buzz words now, but they are in actual use now in progressive companies and will shape application architectures over the next ten years.

Unfortunately, this author seems completely unaware of these cutting edge developments. Instead, he takes the OSI communications layering protocol and tries to apply that. But the OSI stack is inappropriate: it was developed for a completely different job; it has no concept of business processes; the relationship between the layers are tightly bound, not loosely bound (as they are with WS); there is absolutely no notion of components. So instead of helping us architect web services, it actually forces us back into precisely the architecture paradigm WS were designed to avoid!

On the other hand, at the technology level, except for a cursory survery, he completely ignores UDDI, SOAP, WSDL etc, and builds a proprietary technology. Any good architect must understand these technologies: when we build houses from wood, we use one architecture; when we use concrete, we employ a different architecture. Brick buildings are designed differently from prefabricated ones. So it goes with Web Services. In order to adequately architect and design WS applications, a detailed knowledge of WS technologies is essential. And our author is no help here either!