Programming Web Services With SOAP [Paperback]

James Snell (Author), Doug Tidwell (Author), Pavel Kulchenko (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2001

The web services architecture provides a new way to think about and implement application-to-application integration and interoperability that makes the development platform irrelevant. Two applications, regardless of operating system, programming language, or any other technical implementation detail, communicate using XML messages over open Internet protocols such as HTTP or SMTP. The Simple Open Access Protocol (SOAP) is a specification that details how to encode that information and has become the messaging protocol of choice for Web services.

Programming Web Services with SOAP is a detailed guide to using SOAP and other leading web services standards--WSDL (Web Service Description Language), and UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration protocol). You'll learn the concepts of the web services architecture and get practical advice on building and deploying web services in the enterprise.

This authoritative book decodes the standards, explaining the concepts and implementation in a clear, concise style. You'll also learn about the major toolkits for building and deploying web services. Examples in Java, Perl, C#, and Visual Basic illustrate the principles. Significant applications developed using Java and Perl on the Apache Tomcat web platform address real issues such as security, debugging, and interoperability.

Covered topic areas include:

• The Web Services Architecture
• SOAP envelopes, headers, and encodings
• WSDL and UDDI
• Writing web services with Apache SOAP and Java
• Writing web services with Perl's SOAP::Lite
• Peer-to-peer (P2P) web services
• Enterprise issues such as authentication, security, and identity
• Up-and-coming standards projects for web services

Programming Web Services with SOAP provides you with all the information on the standards, protocols, and toolkits you'll need to integrate information services with SOAP. You'll find a solid core of information that will help you develop individual Web services or discover new ways to integrate core business processes across an enterprise.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James Snell is a member of IBM's emerging software technologies team where his work is dedicated to the evolving Web services architecture.

Doug Tidwell is a senior programmer at IBM. He has more than a sixth of a century of programming experience, and has been working with markup languages for more than a decade. He was a speaker at the first XML conference in 1997, and has taught XML classes around the world. His job as a Cyber Evangelist is to look busy and to help people use new technologies to solve problems. Using a pair of zircon-encrusted tweezers, he holds a master's degree in computer science from Vanderbilt University and a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Georgia. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife, cooking teacher Sheri Castle (see her web site at http://www.sheri-inc.com) and their daughter Lily.

Product Details

• Paperback: 262 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (December 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596000952
• ISBN-13: 978-0596000950
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #815,883 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing and thin, August 16, 2002

By 

Stephen J. Friedl (Yorba Linda, California USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Programming Web Services With SOAP (Paperback)

This book was a disappointment. I got thrown into an XML/SOAP project and had to get up to speed in short order. After struggling on my own for a while I bought this book hoping it would have lots of meat on actually using SOAP::Lite, but it had pretty thin coverage.

I did like the big-picture overview of the various technologies, but it was not very helpful in writing an actual SOAP client to talk to a third party's SOAP server. Considering that the author of SOAP::Lite also wrote this book, it seems to me that there could have been a whole chapter on SOAP::Lite from the client view.

This will stay on my shelf as a reference, but for getting up to speed rapidly on actually writing a SOAP client, it was a bust.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Cannot believe this an O'Reilly Title......., March 1, 2002

By 

Mr. Michael E. Smithson "msmitty" (Novi, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Programming Web Services With SOAP (Paperback)

I usually give preference to O'Reilly's books when looking to purchase a book on a certain programming technology. O'Reilly is generally ahead of the pack in terms of writing style, author's reputation, and knowledge of the subject. Unfortunately, I have little to no confidence in the knowledge of the authors in this book just from reading and trying out the introductory examples on SOAP::Lite in PERL. It starts off with the trivial "Hello World" example of writing a SOAP server and a client. The authors didn't even get this one right! Already threre are errata submitted for this example on the oreilly.com site. I couldn't believe it! I mean, if you cannot get the "Hello World" example right, then what confidence do I have in the authors of presenting something more complex?

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice introduction, December 6, 2002

By 

Wilfred Springer (Tricht, Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Programming Web Services With SOAP (Paperback)

If you are new to SOAP and you want to get the overall picture, and you don't care for details, this is the book you need.
If you need a reference guide, this is not the book you want.
If you're looking for a book about SOAP on a particular platform (say Java), this is not the book you need.