Customer Reviews

Building XML Web Services for the Microsoft .NET Platform

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I've probably read 100 technical books, but this is the worst I've ever opened. The number of errors just kills me... Why people don't compile their code and THEN paste it into their book is beyond me... Chapter two has an example where you create a Console Application, then you're asked to rename the Service1 file, but the Console Application wizard creates a Console1 file (the Web Service wizard creates a Service1 file). These errors are just inexcusable and the errors and issues go on forever... The errata should be as large as the book itself. Even larger if they included an apology for all the mistakes. I'd be totally ashamed to have my name on this book. If you're curious, buy a used copy for $5 and see for yourself. Even at that price, you'll probably feel ripped off.

This book first sets out to familiarize the reader with the overall architecture of web services. The author then digs into the relevant specs underlying the technology (schemas, SOAP, and WSDL, in particular). Finally, after laying the foundation, the author then explores the implementation of web services in the .Net framework, covering a host of practical matters such as security and debugging, as well as discovery via UDDI and DISCO. The book concludes with a discussion of the emerging GXA set of specifications.

While I thought the author did a good job of covering the material, the large number of small errors in the code (and occasionally in the text) became increasingly distracting. The book would have benefited greatly from more rigorous technical editing. From Microsoft Press, this is quite disappointing, as their books are generally quite accurate (IMHO).

I also thought that the schema discussion was less clear than the W3C's freely available "XML Schema Part 0: Primer."

This book does contain quite a bit of valuable information, but it is not worth extracting it. The book is quite poorly written and has no comprehensible flow. The material is arranged in subject areas according to chapter, but that is about all you get. Furthermore, the vast number of errors make the hassle of reading this book even worse. Reading this book is like having gravel in your granola. It it likely better to starve, while you look for something, anything, else.

This one is a major disappointment. I paid for the book and need to learn this stuff for a cert test, so I am reading it anyway. You don't have to suffer through it like me!

I can't believe such kind of book could even be published. I don't understand the logic and structure the author presents his ideas. One who read the book will tend to question the author's own understanding of the web services and .NET. If you read his very first example in book (P. 14), you will have to agree with me that he is not C# savvy. It seems to me that the author probably only concerns to get it published and he disregards the quality of the book. You can find plenty of spelling errors also (for example, P41. 'defer' should be 'refer'). I have to disuade whoever wants to buy this book. Bad book, poor writting skills and poor coding skills. Don't buy it.

This book may seem very disperse in terms of the topics covered regarding Web Services, but I found that to be valuable given that it does not provide the typical basic examples. Having said that I believe this is a good book for intermediate and advanced .NET developers with already proficient on Web Services.

These are some comments regarding specific sections of the book:
* A third of the book is spent explainning web service basics, SOAP, WSDL and XML schema which is something not very valuable for proficient web service developers, but good for beginners.
* I found the chapter and samples on XML Serialization good to understand the custom XML serialization mechanisms available in .NET.
* The .NET remoting chapter is a good introduction to Remoting, though I haven't run the sample code.
* The UDDI chapter provides sample code on how to use the MS UDDI SDK to work with tModel documents. This is the first .NET web services book I read that actualy shows how to access UDDI programatically.
* The chapter on security has a good overview of security mechanisms available for Web Services, but has poor examples (WS-Security is only covered in words, as it wasn't supported when the book was published).
* Other valuable info: table of mapping between XSD and .NET types; examples on how to use SOAP headers.

I typically like the MS Press books when it comes to exploring new technologies. Not so with this book. Not only were there errors in most of the code examples, but Short's examples skipped over a number of details and steps that left you figuring them out on your own. Since the code didn't work anyway, I was left trying to figure out if my guesses were wrong or the code was. Buy the O'Reilly book.

while this book covers alot of interesting topics, it is written as if it was code documentation. It is pointing out the obvious but not explaining true reasons behind the provided solutions.

also, the code examples are full of ridiculous mistakes in every chapter. wish i could return it. (or sell it for fraction of cost)

I was reviewing this book for use by some of the junior developers on my team who are SOAP/Web Services newbies.

The editor missed enough to make the book annoying for a newbie trying to work with the samples. It just goes to show the value of a decent editor.

Very disappointing.

This book is organized in such a way that people can read what they want to "learn" without going through previous chapters. While this is good for people who want to learn-on-the-fly, you really have to know what you are doing and what functions you want to call. This is clearly not the case for newbies. Author's wordings and writing style are often confusing, it sometimes forces me to re-read previous sections in order to follow.

It is almost impossible to keep track trying to make sense of much of the written text. The author jumps from one concept to another without any logical structure. You can read a paragraph many times over without being able to understand what are the ideas behind the words.