Customer Reviews

.NET Web Services: Architecture and Implementation

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Keith does a pretty good job of introducing the various peices of web services and how they fit into the .NET world, including things i haven't seen elsewhere such as WSDL's extension points, and some coverage of WSE/GXA. I'd recommend it to anyone looking to get started in web services on .NET (you should also check out Yasser Shohoud's book Real World XML Web Services)

First things, Keith Ballinger is extremely knowledgable when it comes to .NET web services. This book contains a lot of valuable information about designing and building web services using the .NET framework. So why only 3 stars?

This book was published in 2003 (some specs from April 2003 are mentioned to confirm that), but it reads more like a 2001-2002 book. I was really looking for some information about how and when to use WSE instead of standard ASMX. Unlike most ... books I own, this book really needed more technical editing and some better graphics (check out figure 3.3 for a chuckle). Lastly, the website for this book contains no useful information and is often unavailable. I expected more from ... Keith Ballinger.

Hi,

In the first chapters, where the Keith describes the protocols and underlying technologies of the XML WebServices, the reader gets more question marks in his head only. The explanations are very short. Actually there is no explanation, the author recommends to see the specifications foreach topic. For many things even there isn't any information.

As you read the book, you get the feeling that the author knows everything about web services, but he is not willing to show everything. Maybe he didn't have much time for the book, or had other things to do.

Kaan Ozturk

This is the best book I have read on Web Services using .NET

This is definitely for those who are at begineer to intermediate stage. The languages is simple, the examples are concise and to the point. There are so many features in .NET it would be literally impossible to conver in one Book. But this book does the best at doing just that.

I have just completed a project using web services and now after reading this book, I have few ideas to go back and improve the service right from designing to performance. Can't ask more from reading a book :-).

This is an easy book to read. The technical details were great. I learned a lot that I can apply to my work. The last chapter had tips on interoperability with other Web service platforms like Java that seem valuable.

Too many books talk about web services and spend more time on hype and nonsense then showing you how to build and use them. This book however, does not have that shortcoming.

The thing about this book that is so compelling is that you really get into building web services and consuming them, and its done in a way that is very practical and useful.

There's the standard explanation of the things, but he never gets all into the hype at the expense of content.

I think it's geared toward people with a basic understanding of web services, but even if you don't have that, if you walk through his examples, you'll get there quickly.

I will definitely buy anything else that he puts out. He's a great writer and communicator.

I feel this book is a lot different than most of the books on the market dealing with this subject. The author has a unique, well founded perspective on the subject, and is not afraid to share it with the reader. Definitely NOT a re-hash of the W3C specs or .Net SDK docs.