Web Application Architecture: Principles, Protocols and Practices [Paperback]

Leon Shklar (Author), Richard Rosen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471486566 | ISBN-13: 978-0471486565 | Publication Date: October 22, 2003 | Edition: 1

An in-depth examination of the core concepts and general principles of Web application development.
This book uses examples from specific technologies (e.g., servlet API or XSL), without promoting or endorsing particular platforms or APIs. Such knowledge is critical when designing and debugging complex systems. This conceptual understanding makes it easier to learn new APIs that arise in the rapidly changing Internet environment.
* Includes discussions of markup languages: HTML, the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), XHTML, eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
* Contains exercises geared to constructing an advanced XML application that makes use of XML and XSL parsers
* Explores emerging technologies: Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), industry-specific XML standards, Resource Description Framework (RDF), and XML query languages

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

It is no longer enough for Web application developers to be proficient in just one platform. As platforms grow and evolve and new ones arise, developers must be able to transfer their proficiency across platforms in order to design, develop and debug complex Web applications effectively. This book uncovers the underlying core technologies that developers need to understand to help them learn new APIs and application frameworks more quickly.

Web Application Architecture: Principles, protocols and practices provides an in-depth examination of the basic concepts and general principles associated with Web application development. It explains the underlying protocols and languages that support Web application development, and delineates the best practices associated with building robust applications. It describes mechanisms for providing Web access to heterogeneous data sources including relational databases and multimedia.

Includes chapters on:

• Internet protocols - from TCP/IP to HTTP and beyond
• software components - servers, browsers, proxies and agents
• the dynamic web - how web applications present dynamic data
• markup languages - HTML and XML
• future directions and emerging technologies

This book explains the skills that developers need to design and build complex and sophisticated Web applications that are also scaleable, extensible, maintainable, and reusable.

About the Author

Leon Shklar heads up the development team for the online edition of the Wall Street Journal at Dow Jones. Prior to joining Dow Jones he spent six years at Bell Communications Research and almost as long in the world of dot coms and Internet software. Leon holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rutgers University.

Richard Rosen also works for the online edition of the Wall Street Journal as an Application Architect. He began his career at Bell Labs, where his work with relational databases and the Internet prepared him the world of Web application development, including e-commerce projects for 3Com, Outpost.com and Reuters. Rich holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (October 22, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471486566
• ISBN-13: 978-0471486565
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,447,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Takes intermediate developers to the next level, June 16, 2004

By 

Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Web Application Architecture: Principles, Protocols and Practices (Paperback)

This book is an ideal text for providing intermediate-level web developers with a solid grounding in architectural principles and more advanced techniques. Before going into why I like this book I do want to offer one caveat - the authors' approach is towards the Model-View-Controller paradigm, and is based on Java Standard Tag Library, Jarkata struts and Apache. These are solid elements, but if you are working in a different environment you will not appreciate this book as much.

The historical material in this book is not fluff if you approach it with the intent to gain a fuller understanding of the major components of the Internet and web. This material is rich with details about why the core web technologies developed and evolved, including design choices the pioneers made in the face of constraints. In a subtle way this part of the book is a primer on design and architecture.

What makes this book so valuable is the non-trivial application that brings this book alive. This is a refreshing change from other books that use thinly contrived snippets of code or trivial applications. The code for this application can be downloaded from the book's supporting web site, which also contains errata (thus far there are only two entries), and articles that are valuable resources with or without this book.

Overall this is one of the better books on web application design and development, and one that dives into code and technical details.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Historical perspective + technical detail = useful book, January 21, 2004

By 

Brian Mendez - See all my reviews

This review is from: Web Application Architecture: Principles, Protocols and Practices (Paperback)

I have to disagree with the reviewer who disparaged this book's emphasis on history. The background on TCP/IP protocols explained how HTTP came to be and why servers and browsers work the way they do. Discussion of how web development platforms evolved provided insight into the problems newer approaches tried to solve and the problems some of them created. The authors may have gone overboard spouting the merits of "separating content from presentation" and touting the praises of MVC approaches, but their point is a valid one you can really relate to if you've worked with page-centric platforms like ASP and JSP. The historical review of different approaches explained the authors' reasons for ultimately choosing an MVC approach with Struts and JSTL, and offered insights into how development platforms may evolve in the future. This is a book that starts with basics and builds on them, covering protocols, markup languages, and development platforms. The history helps drive the points home. Personally, I learned a lot from this book. I agree that they could have provided a CD-ROM, but it turns out their website (webappbuilders.com) is pretty good and has other good info aside from the app's source code, including some articles from the authors.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I like this book, February 1, 2004

By 

"b5_compiler" (NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Web Application Architecture: Principles, Protocols and Practices (Paperback)

I am not an expert developer but I have a fair amount of experience building financial applications in Java and C++. I spent quite some time looking for a book that would get me started with Web technologies. It is not easy. Yes, there are many books that describe one or another technology but I wanted to find one that puts these technologies in prospective. I was very pleased when I found this book. I can always dig deeper in one direction when I need to but this book helps me to understand how to get started and where to concentrate my efforts. I like it, I think it is very useful.