Customer Reviews

Understanding SOAP: The Authoritative Solution

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

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I found Understanding SOAP to be an excellent book, which enabled me to get a good grasp of SOAP, and provided an implementation, which I could use in my own projects.

SOAP is a new protocol of ever increasing importance to the Developer community. Contrary to widespread rumors, SOAP is not a Microsoft specific protocol. It is supported and managed by a number of companies and has an open specification. That said, SOAP is an important part of Microsoft's latest Internet push, and if you want to develop for the net, you'd better figure out SOAP. If you want to be on the cutting edge, learn SOAP.

The book provides a through introduction and could be easily recommended on that basis alone. However, the book's real merit for me was its chapter on implementing SOAP with COM language Binding. This chapter could easily have been expanded book in its own right.

The authors have a good style of writing. Difficult concepts are clearly explained and become easily understood. All in all I would highly recommend this book to any developer wishing to stay abreast of industry developments.

Excellent presentation of fundamental SOAP technology in chapters 1-7 (193 pages). Explains how the SOAP protocol and request/response model can be used in web applications. Compares SOAP with CORBA and DCOM. Illustrates the contents of SOAP request and response messages. Presents an ISAPI extension for monitoring SOAP traffic (debugging & development). Defines XML content of SOAP messages and shows how to package data types using XML types including base64 for data structures. Introduces approaches for managing state-information in a SOAP based application. Chapter 8 explains how Microsoft's BizTalk Server uses SOAP technology. Briefly discusses the philosophy of Microsoft's SOAP toolkit. Chapter 10 presents code for creating a transparent framework for COM objects which are unaware of SOAP to be called through the SOAP protocol. Chapter 10 covers at least 1/3 of the book, is difficult to understand, consists primarily of code, and occasionally drops into assembly language for unexplained reasons.

This book is basically Microsoft propaganda for their Biztalk.

If you do MS Biztalk and use exclusively MS tools, this is your book.

The soap spec in the appendix was the only useful part of the book.

This book contains actually too books: 1) A deep introduction to SOAP. 2) A description for a SOAP to DCOM to SOAP converting framework. ad 1) This book is a true must have for its description to SOAP. It shows the details in a clear and trustworthy stile. Also one gets a good impression on the impact of this technology without any hype. I am strongly looking forward to a new updated edition.

ad 2) This is hard stuff. You have to be reasonably well acquainted with DCOM at the ATL level. Some knowledge on Assembler is also more than helpful. The framework is ok, though incomplete. Yes it is a bargain at the price of the book and it is interesting to read through.

Should this be two separate books? I think so yes. Though than I would never have read the second book.

This book was extremely illuminating in regards to the SOAP protocol. It brought out many concepts that I was not aware of previously. I work with Kenn, and the guy knows his SOAP. If you have any questions, don't be afraid to contact him via email. I recommend this book for all web application developers.