Customer Reviews

Understanding Web Services: XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI

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

 

 

Eric Newcomer's "Understanding Web Services" provides for a solid theoretical overview into the world of the new web technologies, including XML, WSDL, SOAP and UDDI. For a newcomer into the field, this book is a good start to understanding to what these technologies are and what they can do for business.

THE CONTENTS:

Here are the topics that Newcomer addresses:

1. Introduction to Web Services (XML, WSDL, SOAP and UDDI)

2. XML - Describing Information

3. WSDL - Describing Web Services

4. SOAP - Accessing Web Services

5. UDDI - Registering Web Services

6. ebXML

7. Other Web Service technologies

8. How to Implement

THE ANALYSIS:

Overall, this book is a great teaching and learning tool to the basics of web services. Newcomer does a fine job of describing the various technologies and trying to "dumb" down the technology to describe how it works. One of the great things about the book is the "margin" notes on each page that highlight the definitions and key concepts that he tries to highlight. This makes the book easy to follow along with and helps to reinforce the concepts. Overall, this is great for a textbook.

However, keep in mind that the subject is very technical so if you are not a techie there are parts where you WILL get lost. Overall though, you still come away with a good understanding of what these technologies are and how they can help your business.

THE VERDICT:

Overall, Newcomer does a fine job of covering the various technologies and issues that deal with web services and how they can be applied to business. While the subject is technical and you may got buried in some parts the book's style is still easy to follow. This book was used as a text for an e-commerce web services course I took during the Fall of 2002. Whether you are studying this subject independently or whether you are an instructor looking to use this book for your course, Newcomer's "Understanding Web Services" is a good choice.

Highly Recommended

In my role as a solutions architect, I find myself having to read vast quantities of technical material, much of which is sadly lacking in substance, diluted to the point of uselessness, biased in a particular technology (or vendor) direction, or simply just poorly written. Eric Newcomer's book is a refreshing change from much of the material I have had the misfortune to read lately - it is a well-written work that provides the reader with an excellent overview of Web Services and the use of the associated technologies. The book provides a well-balanced discussion of the various key technology areas (XML, WSDL, SOAP, UDDI), and includes many useful insights into the issues associated with these technologies and where the technologies are heading, based on current industry usage and standards formulation. The history of each technology area is discussed, providing the reader with useful background information. Attention is paid to the salient points, rather than getting bogged down in unnecessary details that might be readily obtained elsewhere. To this end, it is worth noting that a most pleasing feature of this book is the inclusion of a comprehensive bibliography, allowing the reader to readily identify sources of more detailed information on particular subject areas, if required (many of the references are freely available via the Internet).

As clearly stated in the introduction, the book is intended for IT professionals who need to understand Web Services, how they work, and (most importantly) what they are good for - the book is not intended to describe how to implement Web Services using a particular product offering from IONA (Eric Newcomer is the IONS CTO) or any other vendor. It is clear that Web Services are going to have a huge impact on the way we look at distributed computing, however it is also clear that the whole area of Web Services is still evolving. The book does not present Web Services as a 'silver bullet', but instead gives the reader a balanced perspective of the topic, thus providing a sound basis for informed decision making. Much of the material is presented in such a way that it can be readily understood and appreciated by less-technical IT professionals (such as managers like mine that no longer perform a technical role within the organization but want to understand what the heck I'm talking about).

With regard to implementation architectures such as Microsoft.Net and J2EE, the book does not pitch one technology against another, but instead simply states the facts, allowing the reader to formulate their own (now informed) views on these and other such tools and technologies, where and how they might be used, and so on. In addition to covering the main technology areas (XML, WSDL, SOAP, UDDI) the book also discusses alternative approaches to Web Services (ebXML) and perhaps less well-known technologies such as XML-RPC and Reliable HTTP, and what role these technologies might play in future developments. It is interesting to note that the SOAP specification is still being heavily debated, while XML-RPC has been stable for close to five years with implementations existing in many different programming languages. It is possible that some of these alternative technologies will play an important role in the future of Web Services, and a discussion of these technologies is most useful.

In summary, I found this book to be easy to read and highly informative. The writing style is clear and concise, and the book delivers pretty much exactly what it claims to. Wide and informed coverage is given to the subject area, and a comprehensive bibliography serves to provide a means of tracking down further information. The role of Web Services is clearly defined and a balanced discussion as to where and how they might be used is provided. Future developments in the Web Services space are considered, and the inclusion of material on less well-known technologies combines to make this book one of the most complete works on the subject to date. I would highly recommend this book to any IT or software professional interested in or needing to understand Web Services.

Getting a grasp of Web Services is immensely difficult. Every vendor has a different version - often twisting it to suite their commercial needs.

I have been working with the fundamentals for Web Services for over two years, and I have been amazed at the hype to which it has succumbed. Some of this hype is justified and it can be daunting separating facts from fiction.

I was pleased Eric Newcomer's book - it provided a relief from hype and grounds for clear thought. Mr. Newcomer approached this book from the ground-up and does not patronize the reader with unsubstantiated claims.

This book is recommended to the reader that is curious on Web Services and would like a book that can provide a launching pad towards understanding the subject.

In this book you will find:

- How Web Services evolved
- The technology that makes it happen
- The promises of Web Services
- Different software vendor's strategy on Web Services

You will not find how to get started on running your first Web Services projects - that information can be found online or in another book.

In this book you can expect to find the foundation that will give you a good perspective on Web Services. Upon reading this book, you will be able to discern which areas of Web Services that will interest you the most. Armed with this knowledge you will be able to read materials on Web Services, immune to being swayed by marketing hype.

Best wished on your Web Services journey - it is an exciting field.

I hope you find this review helpful - please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

This is one of the best books I've found to date on web services. It sits half way between what I call the protocol books (you know: the O'Reilly sea-creature series) and strategy books such as the one I'm currently writing. What impressed me most was the book's thoroughness. Although it's clearly aimed at developers and includes a fair number of XML examples, the book contains few code listings. (When you're ready for that, you need the sea-creature books.) Instead, Understanding Web Services gives equal time to technology, standards, strategies and Eric's own perspectives on the offerings of the major vendors. (Eric is the CTO of IONA.) If you want to know what web services are all about, with an emphasis on the technologies, this is the place to start. I only wish this book had been available when I was ramping up.

This is a no hype book that thoroughly covers all you need to know to develop non-proprietary, standards based web services. There is no gushing fluff about how great web services are and why it's the best thing since sliced bread. Instead you get a complete, factual overview of what web services are and are not, and the building blocks available to design, develop and implement them.

All of the important pieces are covered (XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI), as are the standards. Alternative pieces, such as ebXML, are also given objective treatment.

If all you want to do is learn about web services without getting bogged down in an author's technical politics, get this book. It's a refreshing change from the ones that have flooded the market in recent months.

I have been thrown into the web services technology without a parachute and this book has helped to put things into perspective. You are not going to sit down and write code from this book, but it does help to define all of the pieces of web services technology and get you started.

With that said, this was a difficult book to read because the writing style is very abrupt, does not flow, and reads like an old style academic textbook trying to impress and confuse the student. I've read more technical books that were easier to understand because they explain their subjects in more natural prose. I found myself frequently reading pages over one or more times.

Eric Newcomer's book was written for the well read architect, technically minded manager, or developer who is interested in more than just bits and bytes. If you are interested in 'how to implement a Web Service in language X or Y', then look else where. If you have the mind for the bigger picture then this is the book for you. Although Eric Newcomer is CTO of IONA this book does not suffer from the typical vendor marketing hype that one has to typically wade through, more importantly being involved in the major organisations defining the Web Service standards he is able to give you an up to date well balanced opinion of where each technology (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI etc) is heading and problems facing each one.

For an architect or manager who has the responsibility of planning the future EAI strategic direction for the company this book provides an honest basis to make well informed decisions e.g. does one move towards ebXML now or wait, or choose SOAP, WSDL, UDDI as they appear to be heading. The book is easily read, starting with the basics, moving on to the core technologies making up Web Services, then to the less well known technologies being floated, finally to an overview of the product offerings from the major vendors. No book can be all things to all people and where Eric Newcomer has thought appropriate he has referred the reader to further reading.

In summary I can highly recommend this book to those who want to know:

- what are Web Services,
- where do they fit in to my organisation,
- where are Web Services heading and the problems they face,
- who/what are the main driving forces behind Web Services,
- how do the technologies (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI etc) fit together,
- what other technologies are currently being floated.

Web Services are posing an exciting future as a mechanism for `globalising' the world of bits and bytes, this is a great book to come to grips with the world of Web Services.

This book is about the data side of XML as opposed to the document side. It is the first excellent (and mature) one I read so far. It gives a thorough introduction to all relevant subjects. Its chapters are often more helpful than an entire book devoted solely to the chapter topic. Especially helpful I found a lot of explanations for seemingly simple or trivial things that nobody else explained and I admittedly did not dare to ask.

Well, I bought this book thinking that it would get me started with developing web services, apart from just introducing them.

Though it does a pretty good job of introducing them, its the getting-you-started-with-development part that it fails to impress. Probably it just isn't designed to do that.

So if you want to read an introductory text on web-services at leisure, this book is a good choice. Its written in a very comprehensible style and I had no problems understanding the key concepts.

However, as is true with any other XML based technology, unless you get some hands on experience with the whole framework, you don't really feel that you are ready to begin professional work as yet. And since XML-based frameworks are usually very detailed and intimidating at first, real-time experience becomes all the more important. I guess now I need to buy another book that'll help me with actual development of web-services .

An excellent book for any business or IT executive that really needs to understand the concepts and implications of Web services. For those who need to appreciate how this technology will impact their business environment and strategic direction, but are not about to sit down and start writing the code using .NET or Java !