Understanding SOAP: The Authoritative Solution 1st Edition

by Mark Stiver (Author)

6 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0672319228

ISBN-10: 0672319225

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The simple object access protocol (SOAP) provides a mechanism for distributing objects over the Internet. This book explains the basics of SOAP and what the various aspects of the specification mean with respect to distributed object computing. Topics include the XML payload, data types, invoking remote methods, and the COM language binding. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sams; 1st edition (January 15, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 514 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0672319225
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0672319228
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.91 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.75 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #5,361,117 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #687 in Object-Oriented Software Design
- #1,517 in Management Information Systems
- #2,776 in Computer Networking (Books)

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Cees van Barneveldt

Good, but includes fluff and time sensitive material

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 11, 2001

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.

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Richard Hassinger

Just another lousy computer book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 17, 2001

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.

43 people found this helpful

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Daniel Mall

technology for web applications

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 1, 2001

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.

9 people found this helpful

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ws__

Surprisingly good book on such an early stage technology

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 30, 2001

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.

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Understanding SOAP: The Authoritative Solution 1st Edition

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