Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Weak Chapter on REST, June 3, 2009
I bought this book primarily to read about writing RESTful Web Services with JAX-RS which is one of the two topics mentioned in the product description.
I must say I am really disappointed with the coverage of this topic. Not many pages are devoted to it, and there are also some flaws in the presentation of REST and in the examples. For example when describing HTTP GET, the author equals "side-effect-free" with "idempotent", which is wrong. The Representations (the XML-formats) are strange, for GET they are serialized Java-objects without any semantics, for POST they are XMLs with the verb <create_team> as the root-tag.
The presentation of JAX-RS (Jersey) is only 4 pages, and far from what I need to do something useful.
As for the rest of the book I don't know, so the rating is based on the presentation of REST and JAX-RS.
I bought this book together with the "Java SOA Cookbook" by Eben Hewitt, and I also have read "RESTful Web Services" by Leonard Richardson. The chapter on REST and JAX-RS in the "Java SOA Cookbook" if faaar better, and "RESTful Web Services" is a good general introduction to REST.
|
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
HITTING THE ROAD RUNNING!!, April 19, 2009
Are you a programmer who is interested in developing Java web services and Java clients against web services, whatever the implementation language? If you are, then this book is for you. Author Martin Kalin has done an outstanding job of writing a book that is a code-driven introduction to JAX-WS, the framework of Choice for Java web services, whether SOAP-based or REST-style.
Kalin, begins by focusing on the basics of writing, deploying, and consuming SOAP-based services in core Java. Next, the author focuses on the service contract, which is a WSDL document in SOAP-based services. Then, he introduces you to SOAP and logical handlers, which give the service-side and client-side programmer direct access to either the entire SOAP message or just its payload. The author continues by opening up with a technical analysis of what constitutes a REST-style service and moves quickly to code examples. Next, he gives you an overview of security requirements for real-world web services, SOAP-based and REST-style. Then, the author presents a survey of what comes with a Java Application Server: an EJB container, a messaging system, a naming service, an integrated database system, and so on. Finally, the author looks at the controversy surrounding SOAP-based and REST-style web services.
This most excellent book interprets JAX-WS broadly. More importantly, it includes leading-edge developments such as the Jersey project for REST-style web services, officially known as JAX-RS.
|
|
|
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great introduction to Java web services, March 29, 2009
As an alumnus of the university at which the well-known Richard Johnsonbaugh / Martin Kalin duo teach as professors, this reviewer is aware of the fact that these gentlemen typically receive positive feedback by their students (they teach at the undergraduate level and so this reviewer cannot attest to this feedback). However, teaching is different than writing, and this reviewer has generally not had positive experiences with their writings (see for example the first review by this reviewer, on "Schaum's Outline of Discrete Mathematics", in which this reviewer recommended that book as an alternative to Richard Johnsonbaugh's "Discrete Mathematics: Fourth Edition"). The book at hand, "Java Web Services: Up and Running", is a break from this stereotype because it is a great introduction to Java web services from various angles. While Kalin provides enough theory to propel the reader into good understanding of the programming material, this book is essentially a programming text, and because the bulk of the content consists of working programming examples, the risk that the complaints often heard by readers about lack of practical code might arise should be alleviated. Another strength of this book is the use of many of the latest implementations of Java libraries in this space, although with any technical text of this genre the field is moving quickly and so it is at risk of becoming obsolete from an implementation perspective in the near future (although just partially, because many libraries are backward-compatible, at least to some extent). For example, the cover of this text states that it includes material on JAX-WS 2.1, but the reference implementation of the technology, Glassfish Metro, is already planning a May 2009 release of JAX-WS 2.2, just a few months after book publication. Another strength of this book is its coverage of web services security in easy to understand language, including transport level security, message level security, and the WS-Security specification, with working examples throughout the chapters dedicated to these topics. While XML configuration files do come into play to some respect within the discussions, the focus is on programmatic use of associated libraries. This provides the benefit to those new to these technologies of understanding what is happening under the covers that are offered by technologies now being offered by various IDEs. While Kalin does mention that there are tradeoffs to be made in using these libraries programmatically, however, it is very curious that the Spring Framework is not mentioned (see my review for "Spring in Action" by Craig Walls, for example). Kalin discusses the fact that message level security is more tedious than transport level security, and seems to prefer HTTPS to avoid this additional complexity, but since only programmatic, reference implementations are discussed the benefits of using Spring are completely missed. And as someone experienced with Apache Axis, Apache Axis2, Apache CXF, and Glassfish Metro, the beneficial abstraction that Spring provides is something this reviewer thinks that those new to Java web services should not ignore after they understand the material presented in this text. But for what this text claims to be, a "thorough introduction to Java's APIs for both XML Web Services (JAX-WS) and RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS)" that "takes a clear pragmatic approach to these technologies by providing a mix of architectural overview, complete working code examples, and short yet precise instructions for compiling, deploying, and executing an application", this book hits the bull's-eye.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, 