Understanding SOAP: The Authoritative Solution [Paperback]

Mark Stiver (Author)

Book Description

Series: Sams White Book Series | Publication Date: January 15, 2000

Understanding SOAP begins with a discussion of distributed object computing, reviewing the current technologies. It then discusses the realities that make distributed object computing so difficult. Given these realities, the book provides a case study of a current technology to show why it is so difficult to distribute objects and why a protocol, such as SOAP, is such an important topic. An in-depth example gives you a working scenario of what is involved with distributed object computing and SOAP. Finally, the book discusses the future of SOAP, to include language binding and system integration. This book provides you with an accelerated approach to understanding how XML applies to distributed systems, specifically using the SOAP protocol.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Understanding SOAP begins with a discussion of distributed object computing, reviewing the current technologies. It then discusses the realities that make distributed object computing so difficult. Given these realities, the book provides a case study of a current technology to show why it is so difficult to distribute objects and why a protocol, such as SOAP, is such an important topic. An in-depth example gives you a working scenario of what is involved with distributed object computing and SOAP. Finally, the book discusses the future of SOAP, to include language binding and system integration. This book provides you with an accelerated approach to understanding how XML applies to distributed systems, specifically using the SOAP protocol.

About the Author

Kenn Scribner and Mark Stiver have considerable experience with distributed systems. Most recently they spent two years developing a commercial product that implemented a SOAP-like XML interface. Kennard Scribner is a senior systems programmer with the world's largest supplier of information services for the legal industry. In addition, he is the founder and President of The EnduraSoft Corporation, a software company specializing in the creation of custom components. Kenn is the author of Sams Teach Yourself ATL Programming in 21 Days, and co-author of MFC Programming Unleashed. Mark C. Stiver is a Senior Software Engineer and the Technical Lead for a product development group at a major data warehouse company. He has over ten years of experience working on a wide variety of commercial, industrial, and military software development projects. Most recently, Mark completed a two-year effort developing an n-tier, distributed product using XML as the base protocol to integrate Windows desktop, Windows NT Server, and UNIX applications.

Product Details

• Paperback: 514 pages
• Publisher: Sams; 1st edition (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672319225
• ISBN-13: 978-0672319228
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,994,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Just another lousy computer book, April 16, 2001

By 

Richard Hassinger (Harvard, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding SOAP: The Authoritative Solution (Paperback)

This book is a difficult read. It's difficult because it's poorly written, it's difficult because it doesn't really say much, and it's especially difficult because after about an hour of trying to find something of value you will start getting very angry that you were ripped off. Supposedly this book should give you the information you need to "understand" SOAP. In fact, SOAP is not very complicated; it's XML messages flying back and forth via HTTP. It's like CORBA or RMI only text-based. But instead of getting this message across and exciting the reader about what can be done with the technology, the authors have chosen to write in the most boring, matter-of-factual language they could possibly utter. Worse, they bloat the pages with reams upon reams of C++ code. Not Java or C# or Visual Basic that most developers that would be interested in SOAP use, but C++. Each C++ segment is explained in painful detail by near-pseudocode text, no doubt to fill as many pages as possible but with the dreadful side-effect of boring the reader to tears. The chapters that try to "introduce" XML are particularly bad, dry and unintelligible. In fact, it almost seems as if the authors didn't understand XML themselves, which seems hard to believe since Stiver claims to have spent two years with it. Perhaps it's just really bad writing style, or really bad attention to detail, or just a great deal of pressure from the publisher to get something, anything, out and onto the shelves. The result is a worthless white book that should no be any part of a web developer's library.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but includes fluff and time sensitive material, February 11, 2001

By 

Cees van Barneveldt (Webster, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding SOAP: The Authoritative Solution (Paperback)

The SOAP standard is a new standard based on XML intended to provide a mechanism for distributing objects over the Internet. It is good to keep in mind when reading this book that the main use of many standards will differ from the originally intended use; the most visible application of SOAP today is Microsoft's Biztalk initiative, which is not based on a distributed objects paradigm but on a messaging paradigm.

This book clearly explains SOAP in the distributed object context. The SOAP concepts and design philosophy are very well explained in the first four chapters; these chapters also give a good comparison of SOAP with the other well known distributed technologies as DCOM and CORBA. The XML functionality is very well explained in the next three chapters with many clear examples. Those seven first chapters + the appendices form the important part of the book, with clear information what SOAP is about and how it works.

The next three chapters are mainly for the interested. Some of the information was already dated at the publishing date. Chapter 8 gives a short description of the use of SOAP in BizTalk; the description of SOAP Toolkit is based on a prerelease version of this Toolkit. Chapter 9 mentions current issues SOAP1.1 does not address yet, and gives some impression about the possible direction of next SOAP standard.

Chapter 10 is for the diehard C++ programmers, who want to try out everything. This chapter is almost 200 pages long and gives an example / programming exercise about how to implement a COM language binding. I did not go through this chapter, it is not useful for understanding SOAP; I expect within the near future we will see standard API's for SOAP, so programmers in C++ and other languages do not have to deal with SOAP at such a low level. This books tells everything a consultant or developer needs to know about SOAP. However half of the book (chapters 8 and 10) is not very useful for most, but might be interesting for some. Within a year chapters 8-10 will be completely outdated.

40 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Convoluted writing style, no examples, October 31, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Understanding SOAP: The Authoritative Solution (Paperback)

I don't think the other reviewers actually read this book. It is a very difficult read due to the authors' dry writing styles. Essentially it reads like a legal brief. When you get behind the verbiage, there's really not much there. A whole chapter was wasted on an XML tutorial that made little sense. There are also no real-world examples, despite mountains of code. The code examples only show what the language binding looks like in C++, no other languages, because the authors only know C++ (from their bios). Almost nothing about Java, perl, or the web in general was discussed. If you want a technical re-write of the specs and useless examples only in C++, you can get it out of this book. Otherwise wait until more books on the subject show up, preferrably written by experienced authors.