Customer Reviews

XML and SOAP Programming for BizTalk(TM) Servers (DV-MPS Programming)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I have to admit, I generally like MSPress books. While generally a bit shorter than some of the other publisher's books, they tend to have a lot of meat in them. XML and SOAP programming is no exception. The problem here is that a large chunk of this tome is dedicated to extraneous material.

The first half of this book is great if you need some background on XML. While much of this material is interesting, it is skimming material for most of us who have developed with XML before and want to focus on SOAP and BizTalk. When the book finally does get into SOAP and BizTalk, the earlier material sets a nice stage, so this material is not a complete waste of time.

The material on SOAP and BizTalk is quite nice and includes some examples in Visual Basic, so you are given a succinct intro to coding your own SOAP/BizTalk applications. The book focuses on schemas rather than DTDs, so some of the material is a bit bleeding edge. However, with Microsoft's commitment to tools to move from bleeding to leading edge, your development time will not be a waste. As schemas are more explicit and useful, I applaud the author on taking the journey out on this limb.

The useful material of this book finishes with information on setting up your own BizTalk server. The rest of the book is largely wasted on SOAP and BizTalk references and a primer on the Omnimark language. To be fair, the SOAP and Biztalk references are not taken verbatim from the W3C spec, so they do add some value. I am not quite as thrilled about the Omnimark tutorial, although it might come in handy some day.

To be fair to Mr. Travis, the book covers the major elements of the technologies it is scoped to cover (XML, SOAP and BizTalk) and does so in an easy-reading, fun manner. It will not make you a BizTalk or SOAP expert, but it will give you enough material to get to work.

In summary, this is a very nice book if you are using Microsoft tools to develop B2B E-Commerce applications. However, it is also useful for those on other platforms as a basic primer. It can also help you develop cross-platform applications, but only if you choose Omnimark as your cross-platform developing language.

BAD: Another review hit the jackpot when s/he claimed the book was misleading: The book devoted (1) chapter to Microsoft's biztalk server 2000, and in that chapter you learned very little. What's a Channel? What's a Port? How do they work? I still don't know -> the book didn't mention them.

GOOD: The book gave really good examples to help you understand how biztalk (the standard), SOAP, ROPE, xml, and xsl(t) fit together and gives a good tutorial on building your own BizTalk server from scratch.

UGLY: The author attempts to shove the "OmniMark" language down the readers throats, claiming it is the language to end all languages. I was very upset when I had to sit and FOCUS REALLY HARD to understand the MANY examples written in Omnimark. Took me a week to read 260 pages. I should've been able to read it in 2 days MAX. 1 Star for greater XML/XSL understanding 1 Star for greater BizTalk Standard understading 1 Star for SOAP and ROPE understanding

This book is billed as an introduction to XML, SOAP, and BizTalk, but I found that just the XML introduction could stand alone as an excellent book.

I have read several books on XML, and they are either a re-statement of the XML spec that is freely available on the Web, or else a description of how to use XML in a very narrow task, like building Web pages or as a replacement to HTML.

The first part of this book covers the XML spec, including the well-formed document and the importance of schemas. It also provides an excellent introduction to the XSLT language for XML transformations, using a novel approach to teaching.

The second half of the book is devoted to the BizTalk open document specification. The author notes that a BizTalk server can be written in any language to run on any platform, not just Microsoft. The book has complete code for two BizTalk servers, one is written using Visual Basic and Active Server Pages, the other in OmniMark, a language for building Web sites. I would have preferred to have the second BizTalk server be written in Java or perl, but it was refreshing to be exposed to a new language. There is even an appendix on OmniMark, which provides a quick overview of this language that seems to be underestimated.

In all, this book is well worth the money, if only for the introduction to XML and XSLT. The SOAP and BizTalk parts are just icing on the cake.

This book is a complete waste of time (unless you are one of about 15 people interested in learing about a product called 'OmniMark'). Here is a real breakdown of the book: Part 1: XML/XSL basics - better explanation anywhere else (p1-129) Part II: XML Messaging - The SOAP part (p133 - 197) Then building a Biztalk server using OmniMark - useless (pg 199 - 242) Chapter 12 might have been interesting but it is only about 18 pages long. The rest of the book (another 150 pages is a primer on OmniMark and the W3C SOAP note (available online ate www.w3.org. All in all it's about $45 for about 30 useful pages.

This book presents a good high level overview of XML, SOAP and Biztalk. It does go down to lower level details form time to time. However, the implementation language chosen by the author is OmniMark, which is not the most popular language around. So be prepared to learn a new language and try to adapt it into your own environment, or just try to grasp the concepts. The last one third of the book contains reference materials.

I've had this book for a while and I can say that MS changed a lot of staff in their latest release. If you get this book you won't find many things the book talks about. My recommendation is to get Professional BizTalk by WROX(10 stars out of 5) and BizTalk Documented by Microsoft Press(8 stars out of 5)

I've been following the efforts of the W3C and the developers at Microsoft for over a year now. I have read a lot of books on the subject of XML. If you need to get up to speed in a short period of time with XML, SOAP, and Biztalk, this is the one you want. The author is clear and concise and often funny. It's a must have reference.

A generally well written and a very interesting read except as another reviewer mentioned, for some annoying and inexplicable reason Microsoft Press, which I have found to generally be excellent, allowed the author to give example code in the Omnimark language. You've never hear of Omnimark? Nope, neither had I or most other people. All the examples in the book should have been given in a widely used language, the most obvious language being the platform neutral language of the web, PERL. The Omnimark tutorial in the Appendix wastes 80 pages that could have been ut to better use describing BizTalk. Given the importance of Biztalk to the Microsoft strategy, it's incomprehensible how they let this one through. That's the last time I buy a Microsoft Press book on spec.

Microsoft published this book? They allowed Biztalk to be in the title? Look folks, if you want to learn XML, there are lots of free sites on the web to help you out. If, however, you want to implement Microsoft's hot new Biztalk technology, this book has absouluely nothing for you. What a joke! The entire suite of tools you are interested in gaining knowledge on is summed up on one page (Other Biztalk Tools). I can build the same process using ASP, VB, etc... nothing new here. Want we want to know, Microsoft, is how to build sites to exchange documents using the tools provided in Biztalk! What is a port?! What is a... etc, etc Sorry folks, they never answer any of this. If you want to do anything with Biztalk, don't waste your money on this waste of trees. Go through the included tutorial in Biztalk, and hope for Beta2!

Considering the groundswell behind XML, SOAP and others at Microsoft and around the industry the books available are pretty sparse. The book is very good although they should have chosen a more widely used language than Omnimark as an example. Book is a readable and well organized introduction and the companion CD (including e-book version of the book) is very good. I would like to see a deeper follow up from the authors.