.NET Web Services: Architecture and Implementation [Paperback]

Keith Ballinger (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321113594 | ISBN-13: 978-0321113597 | Publication Date: February 22, 2003 | Edition: 1

Most books on Web Services have focused on specific technologies, and how to use those class libraries to build services and clients. Some have attempted to give an overview of SOAP and WSDL and other related technologies. This book will address the issue of why Web services exist, and how to create them using Microsoft .NET. As Program Manager for Web Services in Microsoft's .NET Framework group no one is in a better position than Keith to explain why .NET's web services tools were set up the way they are, and how to get the most out of them. Once you understand how implementation and architecture of Web services work in .NET, you'll be better able to take full advantage of .NET's powerful tools. The book features a lot of code and many working examples.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Praise for .NET Web Services

“Keith Ballinger has been ‘Mr. Web Services’ at Microsoft for as long as there were Web services. Anyone doing work on the Microsoft Web Services platform would do themselves a favor by reading this book, as Keith’s insights are unique.”

         —Bob Beauchemin, DevelopMentor

“This book is a very good introduction to Web services, providing enough specific information for a person to fully understand the principles and implementation issues of Web services . . . Ballinger clearly outlines the fundamental architectural topics that any organization looking to implement XML Web services should consider.”

         —Colin Bowern, Consultant, Microsoft Corporation

“This book provides information about all principal components of Webservices: transport protocol, interface definition and services discovery mechanisms, security and messaging infrastructure, as well as underlying technologies (XML, TCP/IP, HTTP). Description of each subject is comprehensive and complete; examples provide good illustration from the content.”

         —Max Loukianov, Solomio Corp.

.NET Web Services is the authoritative guide to designing and architecting better Web services using Microsoft technologies. Written by Keith Ballinger, a Program Manager for XML Web Services at Microsoft, this book explains what Web services are, why they exist, and how they work in .NET. Readers will gain a thorough understanding of the technologies that allows them to take full advantage of .NET.

The book opens with an introduction to Web services and Web services standards. It then explores .NET technologies and examines how the .NET Framework gives developers the tools they need to build Web service applications. The core of the book focuses on the key specifications that make up the Web services architecture, from HTTP to SOAP to WS-Security. .NET Web Services concludes with the author's expert advice on architecting and designing Web service applications.

Topics covered include:

• The features and pitfalls of Web services
• Web services standards
• Creating Web Services with ASP.NET
• Creating Web service clients
• XML serialization with .NET
• Extending Web services
• Transport protocols for Web services
• XML and XML Schemas
• SOAP
• Describing Web services
• Discovering Web services
• Messaging with Web services
• Securing Web services
• Advanced messaging

Best practices are illustrated throughout with full working examples as well as code samples using C# and ASP.NET Web services. A companion Web site at www.keithba.net includes all sample code from the book.

Books in the Microsoft .NET Development Series are written and reviewed by the principal authorities and pioneering developers of the Microsoft .NET technologies, including the Microsoft .NET development team and DevelopMentor. Books in the Microsoft .NET Development Series focus on the design, architecture, and implementation of the Microsoft .NET initiative to empower developers and students everywhere with the knowledge they need to thrive in the Microsoft .NET revolution.

About the Author

Keith Ballinger is the Program Manager for the Web Services Enhancements for Microsoft .NET at Microsoft. He was a key contributor to several features in the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET, including ASP.NET Web services. Keith is coauthor of the Web Services Inspection Language specification, and he regularly speaks at a variety of conferences, including Microsoft Tech Ed, the XML Conference & Exposition, and the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. He is also coauthor of Special Edition: Using Active Server Pages™ (Que, 1998).

0321113594AB01162003

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (February 22, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321113594
• ISBN-13: 978-0321113597
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,434,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not great, March 11, 2003

By 

"shawn5191" - See all my reviews

This review is from: .NET Web Services: Architecture and Implementation (Paperback)

It's hard to think of a writer that has better web service credentials that Keith Ballinger. Because of that, I expected a lot from this book. And though the book is good, it's unfortunately equivalent to almost every other .NET web service intro title. I didn't find any more low-level details or tips that weren't already in other books (other good choices are Yasser Shohoud's Real World XML Web Services for VB'ers and O'Reilly's Programming .NET Web Services for C#-coders). There was disappointingly little advice for enterprise architecture here (how web services should fit into a distributed application) although I got a better understanding of SOAP encodings. I haven't yet found any book that covers WSE... hopefully the second editions of these books will fill this area in.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Substandard: shallow, few examples, MANY errors!!!, May 21, 2005

By 

Richard Gjerde "Karamasov" (Oslo Norway) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: .NET Web Services: Architecture and Implementation (Paperback)

This is one of the most disappointing books I have ever read. I have read a few books in the ".NET Development Series" before and have come to expect solid, easy to grasp, and useful information. This books fails on almost every account.

The explanations are inadequate. The author uses a lot of time to explain the obvious, while failing to explain more complex topics.

The language is really, really bad. An example: "Of course, there are many other applications of routing as well. As well, I fully expect that this specification will evolve over time."!!??

Maybe the most annoying thing about the book is all the dreadful typos and inconsistencies. I have never seen anything like it, and I cannot believe that anyone ever did any proofreading of this book. For example on page 35 he describes a very simple example of a Web Service, a class "TestClass" with one method "Add". On the next page is the image from Internet Explorer which shows what you see when you type the URL of the service on the server, the class is suddenly named "POClass". Later when he describes the SOAP Message for the service it is for another class altogether with a method "HelloWorld"???!!! In this example, it is easy to figure out what is wrong, and it is more annoying than anything else, but in other places where the material is not so easy to understand, the errors are harder to ignore.

Finally and maybe most importantly, the author fails to give any motivation for a lot of the things he does. For example, he describes how one in different ways (by using attributes, etc) can change the format of the soap messages for the service. However, he doesn't say a word about why one should prefer one format for the other.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is a horrible book., February 28, 2006

By 

Mike Davis "Mike" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: .NET Web Services: Architecture and Implementation (Paperback)

Web service architecture is a big topic and it's not easy to explain well. Obviously the author attempted to explain it but may be due to limited amount of time, his explanation is very shallow and sometimes almost useless: on page 49, he briefly touches how to create object reference with ID/HREF combinations and promises to discuss the topic in Chapter 9 in "greater detail". In chapter 9, on page 183, yes, he revisited that topic but only with 3 short lines of "explanation" which is pretty much the same as that on page 49 - where is the "greater detail"?

The language is bad too: on page 72, "There's a convenient Add Web Reference dialog box...exactly for that kind of thing." What do you mean by "that kind of thing"? Are you writing a professional book or just an IM chat message? Besides, the discussion of creating clients with VS .NET is horribly shallow.

Avoid this book.