Developing Web Services for Web Applications [Paperback]

Colette Burrus (Author), Stephanie Parkin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1931182213 | ISBN-13: 978-1931182218 | Publication Date: September 15, 2005

This book shows you how easy it is to create and use Web Services with IBM® Rational Application Developer or Web Developer, and WebSphere Application Server.

Intended for novice to intermediate Java programmers, Developing Web Services for Web Applications teaches users how to create Web Services, deploy Web Services to a server, and create client applications that use Web Services. Each chapter of the book teaches a key Web Service concept and takes you on a detailed, guided tour for creating or using a particular Web Service. Even if you’re completely new to Web Services, by the time you finish the lessons in this book, you’ll have all the skills needed to create useful Java programs with Web Services.

Using the “guided tour” approach, the book comes with practical step-by-step instructions and numerous screen captures, making it easy to follow along. While most books teach how to use either a development tool or a particular technology, Developing Web Services for Web Applications combines learning about Web Services with using Rational Developer tools. Each chapter develops a complete Web Service and/or application, with sample code and solution files provided on the accompanying CD-ROM. Also included in each chapter are additional exercises to help reinforce the concepts covered in that chapter.

By the end of the tour, you’ll be able to use Rational Developer tools to build your own Web Services, and you’ll understand why Web Services are gaining popularity as a way to provide services across the Internet.



Developing Web Services for Web Applications:
• Is perfect for all skill levels, from those taking their first steps to those looking to explore more advanced topics
• Teaches you Web Services concepts and terminology as you learn how to use the Rational Developer tools
• Shows you how to create, deploy, publish, and use Web Services
• Explores troubleshooting, using relational databases, using JavaServer Faces Web applications, adding security features, and much more


Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1: Creating your first Web service and Web application
Chapter 2: Deploying and publishing your Web service
Chapter 3: Discovering Web services
Chapter 4: Handling Web service errors
Chapter 5: Using databases, part 1
Chapter 6: Using databases, part 2
Chapter 7: Using Web services with JavaServer Faces, part 1
Chapter 8: Using Web services with JavaServer Faces, part 2
Chapter 9: Securing Web services, part 1
Chapter 10: Securing Web services, part 2
Appendix A: Installing WebSphere Express
Index

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Colette Burrus was a project manager for the IBM alphaBeans project working with the Beans Around the World team. She is the coauthor of Building Applications with IBM WebSphere Studio and JavaBeans and VisualAge for Java for Non-Programmers. She lives in Apex, North Carolina. Stephanie Parkin is content manager for IBM's VisualAge Developer Domain (VADD) and WebSphere Developer Domain web sites. She has created documentation for various programming languages, including VisualAge for Basic. She is the former editor in chief of WebSphere Developer Technical Journal and the author of two tutorial series on the VADD web site: Designing Beans for Visual Programming and Visual Programming with VAJ. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Mc Press (September 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931182213
• ISBN-13: 978-1931182218
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,742,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars easy to make a Web Service, October 22, 2005

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Developing Web Services for Web Applications (Paperback)

Web Services are an extremely promising new field, and IBM has been building out its WebSphere to handle these. A big problem with Web Services is the mass of documentation and the amount of boilerplate coding you need to do, in order to even have a simple Service. A daunting obstacle to anyone wanting to learn what Web Services are about.

What this book does is show how WebSphere can handle a lot of that behind the scenes boilerplate, and lets you focus on actually building [and debugging] the guts of a Web Service. By the way, the "Rational" programs described in the book are a renaming of earlier functionality build within WebSphere. Personally, I would just lump Rational back into WebSphere.

The book has the foresight to quickly start with a very simple example of a stock quote program. The raw data comes from a Yahoo site. Your Web Service sends a query with symbols of companies, and Yahoo returns a string with the prices, and elementary parsing extracts these. The book shows how WebSphere wraps your code, so that it can now answer a query from another remote application. Naturally, the text then goes on to describe how to make that application, with its requisite proxy code.

Some of you may have programmed client-server code in C or C++, using Remote Procedure Calls. There, utility programs like rpcgen would make the necessary proxy stubs for marshalling and unmarshalling the queries and replies. You should clearly understand that Web Services have moved away from that tightly coupled mechanism, and they use XML for data transfer. But at one level, you can simply and correctly regard what WebSphere does for you in such things as making the proxy code to be a much more elaborate, but equivalent, analog of rpcgen.

Others of you will have used WebSphere, or other JSP/Servlet containers, to make those types of applications, where the container would autogenerate various source code files and compile them. So what the book describes WebSphere doing for Web Services is a small conceptual step from work you have already done with WebSphere.

The book then goes into much more detail, by building out that example Web Service. Like how to detect and cope with Web Service errors. Or test a Service. Or tie the Service to a database. (Surprise, it's DB2!) All important. But, more broadly, you get an understanding of how WebSphere acts as the Web Service container. A major help to you.

The virtue of the book is that it demystifies Web Services, and shows how WebSphere can put this within your programming scope.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simple, Gentle and Effective Introduction to Web Services, June 7, 2006

By 

uml_zepho_com (Raleigh, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Developing Web Services for Web Applications (Paperback)

I was browsing the book store and saw this book and I bought it immediately. Mainly because it is very practical and makes it very simple to learn about Web Services. I realized that I must atleast know about Web Services from the perspective of a Web Developer.

Congratulations to the author for coming out with such an excellent book. This book really has made learning about Web Services fun. I have completed only the first chapter and I feel that it is worth every penny I spent on this book.

This is refreshing because IBM redbooks are very boring with lot of theory and not enough practical examples. This book takes a different approach and does a very good job.

The first jsp page needs a try catch statement which the author did not mention. I hope there are no technical mistakes in other chapters. I will post an update to my review after I finish it.

3.0 out of 5 stars Review, May 25, 2008

By 

K. Jackson (Kansas City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Developing Web Services for Web Applications (Paperback)

I'm obviously in the middle on this book. I'm sure it's value was much higher when it was initially introduced, and the referenced IBM Websites in the book actually existed. I'd say the book is well written, with good step-by-step attention to detail. Chapters 1-3 were easy to follow and reproduce, except for the fact that I couldn't get the IBM UDDI Test Registry piece to work. Chapter 4 was OK. Things went south starting in Chap 5, and continued to worsen so that by the end of Chapter 7, I decided to stop trying to work the examples. I have to agree with one reviewer about the lack of published errata. I think overall the authors did an excellent job in the actual writing, but could have done the purchasers of the book and themselves a considerable service by doing what the best authors do: create\update an errata page. My summary opinion is that I think the book probably does a good job of giving you a good fundamental knowledge base, but that the payoff is in reading the book..not actually trying\expecting to get the examples to work.