Customer Reviews

SOA Using Java Web Services

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Mark Hansen says SOA using Java Web Services is hard and he seems to do his best to prove it.

The author states in the Preface, "...it is inevitable that I will have disappointed some readers because a particular topic of interest to them isn't covered." For me, that wasn't the problem. The problem was there was not enough grounding in what I already know to give me enough lift to understand the text.

I couldn't really follow most of the book. Reading this book, my concentration collapsed under a borage of acronyms and complex notations. I don't think this book is for someone who is not already nearly an expert on the subject. Too many times I saw phrases like "my purpose is not to write a detailed tutorial for..." -- leaving me wondering what background information he would provide.

I cannot say this is a bad book. I can only say I didn't get much out of it and that most developers would be challenged themselves. I am not an expert in SOA or Web Services, but I have been a Java developer more than six years and a software engineer for more than 20.

Despite being a book about Java Web Services, there is really not very much Java in the book. It's mostly dense text with XML examples.

I couldn't wait to dive into this book, as it covered precisely the topics that are sorely lacking in other books on the subject. For instance, the book covers topics related specifically to JEE 5. It's also got a chapter on REST, which other current SOA books bizarrely ignore.

But there's the rub: the writing logic is incredibly "upside down". The author chokes you with details first, then, much later, gives the context into which the details should fit. Sometimes he even neglects to give any context at all, and you're left with a load of low-level details for which you have no use.

The REST chapter is a case in point, instead of explaining REST or elaborating the position of REST vis-a-vis the broader spectrum of Web Services, which he said in the preface that he'd do, the chapter starts with an out-of-place primer on XML and XSLT and then moves to implementation examples of doing REST with and without Java Web Services. The end.

Also, the book assumes you already know all you need to know about SOA and Web Services, and focuses far too closely on the the implementation using the new tools of Java Web Services. While that's the title of the book, the back cover makes you think that it covers issues broader than implementation details, by saying things like "practical techniques for managing the complexity of web services and SOA, including best-practice design examples".

In general I found that the information is badly organized, the sub-topics in a chapter don't build up well to the chapter's objective, the diagrams are confusing, and, usually, you don't get what the author is trying to achieve from the flood of information he provides.

A colleague and I were already experienced Java developers. This book greatly helped getting us jump started into web services. I bought a couple similar books at the same time, but this is the one I used most.

That said, acronyms were over-used. By page 70, my head was swimming trying to remember the difference between an SEI and an EIS. If you are going to abbreviate that many things, create a table to decode them or at least include them in the glossary.

This is a very good book to learn and master WebServices and SOA concepts. I am a developer and understand how difficult it is to develop and maintain webservices for an enterprise application. This book explains the concepts very clearly along with very good examples which I use as reference for my development. From design to implementation this book has been very helpful. I recommend that everyone who is working on webservices should have this book. This book also talks about interesting ideas which will help in designing robust and scalable web service applications. It surely helps improve design and build robust,scalable web service application, and very good for reference.

I work in a company, which lost its largest client because it delivered
a large Java application with poor usage of SOA techniques. Having worked
on that project, I know how difficult it can get when there are 18
engines talking to each other through XML's !

I wish our company had had this book to guide us during that project.
Although not an easy text, reading this book has been a pleasure,
because it offers clear and practical advice for working with
the often overly complex SOA technology standards for Java (e.g.,
JAX-WS, JAXB).

The book has lots of examples, starting with simple REST services and
progressing to more complex SOAP/WSDL and JAXB illustrations, including a
"SOAShopper" tool that integrates shopping across eBay, Yahoo, and Amazon.

For me, the book's pluses are: the speed at which I
could get started with web services; the forward-looking approach
based on both SOAP and RESTful API's; the detailed coverage of JAXB;
and the entire concept of binding rather than mapping for Java/XML
translation.

Chapter 6 and 7 deal with the JAX-WS both client side and server side.
The author describes SOA architecture and concepts of WS with
sufficient detail and on the other he provides granular examples to
develop and deploy lots of examples. I think this combination of high
level architecture and detailed examples distinguished this book from
any other SOA/Web Services text that I've seen.

Chapter 8 clarifies packaging issues in detail; a very comprehensive
effort that deals with most of the situations a software developer is
likely to encounter in practice!

At the end of the book, an experimental open source framework, called
SOA-J, is introduced to demonstrate the an alternative approach to SOA
using Java. Instead of arguing towards replacing Web Services, the author
tries to stimulate thought over extending the capabilities in Chapter 11.

Excellent content along with ample illustrations and explanations make
it a very useful book.

I have suggested that my corporate library to get hold of some copies of
the book!

Gives a solid background for understanding how to use the latest Java web services APIs. This seems to be one of the only books to date with any coverage of JAX-WS 2.0, and this provides thorough coverage of how to use the APIs in a number of different ways. It is probably best used by someone who already understands the basic concepts of web services and SOAP.

College-level and professional collections strong in Java web programming will find SOA Using Java Web Servers an important reference: it's for advanced users and offers a hands-on guide to complementing web services and Service Oriented Architecture. Chapters cover best-practice design ideas and the latest code samples, explaining mapping strategies and SOA integration processes, surveying packaging and deploying web services components, and including code solutions for common development issues. No SOA collection should be without it!

This book has lots of great information on implementing JAX-WS web services. It skips the basics about web services (which I think is a good thing). Unfortunately it also skips some details later - some questions I had were answered by downloading the examples and reading through those, but they weren't called out in the text. The book also focuses a lot on code-first (wrapping existing code in web services) rather than WSDL-first development; and the author tends to focus on a provided approach to web services of his own, which I could have done without.
But overall the book provides some great information on JAX-WS, particularly the features that are more advanced and harder to find examples of using. Definitely not an introductory book, but I'd recommend to people who like to understand how things work more than just knowing how to use them.

Author says that there are many tutorials how to create a 'hello world' webservice but when you want to create a bigger system it is not that easy. I think that when you write a book you should start from a hello world example and than explain more complex solutions. What is more, I think web services are not difficult. This book makes it difficult.
Summing up, this is terrible writing. I don't like it.

I'm not sure what I like best about this work. Is it the author's ability to clearly explain the details of SOAP and the improved Sun implementation of Web services without becoming tedious ? Is it the fact the his code examples work ? Is it his provided Maven build scripts or his attentive support on the book's Web site ?

I guess it's all of those things. The author provides a lot of detail about what's happening under the covers and illustrates what he is saying with real XML and code and build scripts. The material is dense but written in a readable style.

Hansen points out that developing Web services is not easy, and that's the truth, so you should not buy this book if you are hoping to pick up a new skill in a week. If your goal is to master the subject, however, I have never seen a better single starting point than this book and its collection of supporting resources.

I'd like to take the opportunity to recognize the author for contributing what is in my view an exemplary piece of work in the software development field. If only more books were created this way ! Thanks.