Customer Reviews

Professional C# Web Services: Building .NET Web Services with ASP.NET and .NET Remoting

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

To really understand Web Services and Remoting requires hard work, but if you take the time and don't give up, this book will give you a solid understanding of the subjects, especially Remoting. Not only the basics but also advanced techniques. I've read the book a couple of times, together with Professional ASP.NET Web Services, and written the code examples, so now I'm doing my own projects with both techniques and feeling confident with what I'm doing. But it takes time!

...but it comes up short. WROX (WROT is too strong, but WRUSH or WROUGH is more appropriate) seems to *rush* books to press while they are in *rough* draft form. The editing in this book is far better than in "Professional C#", but the content is now sorely lacking. The book purports to cover both ASP.NET and .NET remoting web services. I do not know enough about remoting to either praise or condemn their coverage, but I do know that their coverage of (the relatively simple) ASP.NET web services is lacking. Example: they do not discuss the terrific things that can be done with the SoapHeader class/attribute and the overriding of SoapExtensions. (If they do discuss it, I can't find it. I initially thought the index was poorly done, but now I think the index is spartan because the content is thin.) Microsoft's (new) course on building web services with C# is a far better reference than this book; somebody will capture this content in a book soon enough. I'd try to wait for a second edition or another non-rushed non-rough tome to come out.

If you want to get the understanding of .NET Remoting, this is the right book.

XML Web Services with ASP .NET are quite easy to build, so, this book doesn't looses too much time on it.

If you want to learn only ASP .NET web services then you can try other titles that covers only this.

No book currently out has as much quality material on .NET Remoting. This book really helped me understand this technology. While some material on Web Services is duplicated, the Remoting material alone makes the book a good buy.

Those who were thinking of purchasing Wrox Press "Web Services using ASP.Net" but delayed waiting for this more C#-oriented volume will be extremely disappointed. Contrary to information from Wrox this is NOT 700 pages long - it's less than 600, with an enormous amount of "basics" padding and the usual errata and bad code that Wrox in their haste to milk the .net cash cow are becoming reknowned for. To add insult to injury there isn't even downloadable code for this title, as there is with every other Wrox title, so you have to manually type in all the example code, which is presented in confusing snippets rather than in its entirety just to make life even more difficult.

Given that last month's "Professional Web Services using ASP.Net" from the same publisher covers almost entirely the same ground, is a thicker and more substantial volume, gives all examples in C# and VB.Net and has downloadable code but sells for the same price it is a far better bet. Officially this new volume gives much more information on .Net Remoting than the earlier ASP.Net -oriented volume did, but frankly that "extra" information comes at an extremely high price. I would say the pricing is extortionate!

for someone who is a beginner and have a knack and
understanding for ms technologies, I was pleased that
most of the examples actually worked. I was however
disapointed in the poor explanations into how the
program worked. This was cruicial since if the example
did not work, i would have no idea how to debug it.
In addition the lack of or poor explanation would make
the book extremely difficult to finish off since the
foundations of the technology was never explained.
This is somewhat of an advanced book however, i did
give it 3 stars due to working examples did work, even
though I learnt v little in why.

As mentioned from a previous reviewer, the downloads are badly disorganised, its a very tough book to get through and there are
already errors in chapter5 alongside missing downloadble examples

This book is not organized at all. There are allot of code examples but they are totally useless. Since one can not really run any of the examples because they are not organized into applications and one can't really follow which part does what and which part goes after which. And I have successful 10 years of experience developing web and client service apps. So this book was waste of time and money for me.

Although this book contains a great deal of useful information on using .Net Remoting, it is a little rough around the edges and in obvious need of further editing. Like many Wrox books I've owned, it shows signs of being hurriedly released. And though I think that producing a book on such a vast subject as Web Services is better accomplished with the efforts of multiple authors, a better effort should have been taken to blend the different chapters so that they flow more smoothly and do not repeat the same material. Also, I refuse to believe the pizza delivery example needs to be as awkward as it is. We might as well stick with COM if we have to jump through hoops like these to get objects to talk to each other. All-in-all though, considering what little is out there and the book's useful content, I would recommend it. But I do hope it's more polished in the next edition.

For a beginner its good. I liked the way concepts are expressed.
I just wish I read this few a couple of years ago, when it came out!

As a first read on web services this was not bad. It is a passable reference as well.

The book starts with a summary of the technology and a brief overview of the component technologies - XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI - and how it fits into the .Net framework .A large section is devoted to .Net Remoting followed by more on consuming and updating web services and clients. There are ample examples of the design and coding of simple to moderately complex web services. While I noticed the usual mistakes and typos in a book that was probably rushed to meet demand for .Net literature, none were overly distracting or confusing. The book concludes with some case studies and more examples.

While it is not really necessary to have a knowledge of C#, the reader should have a good grounding in object oriented programming languages and some knowledge of COM or RPC wouldn't hurt. I see this technology as the successor to COM (the fact that Don Box was involved in the SOAP standard definition reinforces that idea), perhaps even finally living up to the dream of plugable code modules. I could see using this as the text for teaching a web services class. P-)