Customer Reviews

Professional Open Source Web Services

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Fairly decent book(why all the negative reviews here?). Covers the widely available web services fairly well, but could have done better by detailing more on SOAP than XML-RPC. Has good coverage of the three main service technologies and lots of reference material on diffrent servers including ones based on Java and Perl. Topics on exposing stateless and stateful EJBs as web services and embedded web services are hard to find elsewhere. Packs a lot of info in one book, where each topic is qualified to be a book by itself. Has lots of sample code and interoperability info. Good value for money.

This book covers lots of open source web services...although not in detail, its a good book for intermediate professionals who want to switch between technologies. Good coverage of UDDI, SOAP, WSDL technologies and also covers wide range of languages and servers for quick reference.
Though seems to jump abruptly between topics, which could be due to targeted audience of experienced developers, this one seems to try to motivate open source efforts in light of the hype around .NET and J2EE.

I received this book, hoping to get some inside clues on how SOAP and XML RPC is implemented using Open Source Technologies.
I found the book to be full of general fluff, patch-up and a series of disparate articles on Perl, Python, C++????? etc.

Here is why i trounced this book:

1.HALF TRUTHS: At the beginning it brings this corny motivation for SOAP that it's a better way for web page scraping. Hello? SOAP works along EDI and Corba. It's a simplified version of both that makes it easier and language/platform independent for those cases that don't need the full functionality of EDI or Corba.

2.SELF ASSERTIONS - Well, then there is a quote, where the author blankly asserts that posts are more useful then gets. I'm familiar with the debate about the pros and cons. But, an author just asserting one is better and putting as a reason 'trust me, baby, I'm smart', is just so pretentious.

3.ZERO SCOPE: To put it plain from flipping around in the book, I didn't find any good information - very broad but Zero scope; and the authors just disgusted me with their way of writing and assertions.

4.INCOMPLETE 1: There is very little to zero coverage on XML RPC when compared to SOAP; but i can understand that it is more out of the point 2 syndrome.

5.INCOMPLETE 2: Coverage of automatically generating interface descriptions/ a server implementation to do the same, is surprisingly incomplete

Outside of all this, the lack of practical treatment is altogether amiss except for the big cheese example at the back, which in all probabilities fail to summarise the book.

This book would have received a bigger readership if all these disparate articles (use of 'articles' in lieu of 'chapters' intended) are pinned up online. I recommend this book to the err... SHREDDER.

This is a great read. Unlike so many computer books, its not filled with unnecessary introductory chapters for every topic. It is very practical as well as explaining the underlying technologies at a level you can understand them without getting bogged down on detail you only really need to know when you are actually coding.

As a member of the Open Web Application Security Project. I was especially interested in web services security and the practical examples were very well explained and well written.

This book sits high on my large pile of books so I can get to it easily!

I bought this book for our library, as our guys usually like Wrox books.
(+) This book would be a quick tip help for those who would like to know about creating Web services using Python and PERL.
(-) Most implementations are obsolete ! Probable we bought this book little late.

I bought this book before vacation. I never posted any review before, but thought coz I think the book is wonderful and deserves appreciation. Incidently, the book contains more than I expected. Wonder how the authors have managed to give all that in such a compact size. The information makes me feel confident to face my customers. Although PHP and Python have not developed to my expectations. SOAP4R and kSoap was a pleasant surprise. Why so much of C++?? In future, expand PHP and Java sections. I give 5 stars because I use only open source and I encourage a book of this kind. This book was just what I was looking for!

I am interested in lightweight soap implementations and using SOAP via applets, and found this book extremely useful.

I purchased this book as the topic seemed innovative. But
as it turned out, neither the technology that addressed the subject nor the book was quite up there. I couldn't find anything interesting beyond the fact that it was just another Web Services book. Each chapter in the book read like incomplete articles.The only chapter that caught my eye was the one dealing with SOAP::Lite
For anyone serious about web services, i would recommend Java web Serices from ORA.

There is a serious lack of understanding that web services are not the be all and end all of software development,
and that though they have distinct advantages, they also have their own quirks and disadvantages (esp. lack of proper implementations
being very pert to a book of this nature) - This book is a complete slave to the hype.

When i bought this title i expected something very innovative, but at the end of reading it all i am thoroughly disgusted.
Someone please explain to me (or correct me on) why chapters on Python, Ruby etc figured in this book - I figured that
they crept in simply to maintain the client and server presentation through all langauages. This approach was not only bad
on all trees that were felled but also deceived the reader with insertions of flaky and immature implementations. The gist is
for the webservices fraternity is to "wait" for a truly professional book to appear on this subject.