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Introduction

If there has been any hype in the Java community the last couple of months or years, it certainly was Web Services. No matter where you go, if you visit a Java convention or any Java-related event, there will always be multiple speakers sharing their knownledge and ideas on Web Services with the rest of the community.

As an IT consultant working for a firm that is specialized in systems integration, EAI and XML technologies in general (based on the Java platform), I've always been very interested in this subject.

But, while much hype is created around the subject, and many people embrace the new buzzwords that come along with the technology, it's really astonishing to see how small the number of real implementations to find around is.
Most systems developed today do rely on some sort of XML messages for their communication, but proprietary systems that are created for the scope of one project really outweigh the standard implementation of web services by far.

And on top of that, the small number of web services that are effectively in use, are mostly based on SOAP RPC, which is only a part of the potential of web services.

After all, this technology is quite new, and many people (even IT people involved in system integration projects) can't define terms like SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI in a confident way.
Many people are willing to implement web services, but confusion on the subject, its standards and its implementations can make the adoption of the technology difficult sometimes.

What this book can teach you

It's really good to see a book being published on a subject that is very recent. The book doesn't only give you a good insight in the concept of web services and surrounding technologies (which woud be even great on it's own), it is also capable of using the latest evolutions in products and frameworks in it's examples.

Apache AXIS, the new SOAP implementation from the Apache organization (both stand-alone and running on Tomcat), JAX-RPC, JAXR, and other newly emerged implementations are used in the examples throughout the book.

There are two main things that this book can teach you:

First, the theory and definitions of all subjects surrounding the web services concept. If you have ever wondered what's the relationship between a Web service and SOAP, whether SOAP has to be used over HTTP, or how that UDDI discovery idea can be used in practical, this book really gives a clear and usefull explanation of all these things.

Although I've been in contact with the subject many times, I must confess that this book really cleared some things out I've never grasped completely.
This makes the book not only usefull for the techies, who want to get into code as soon as possible, but it enables IT managers, architects, and other people with a more functional approach to the subject to get a real insight on web services.

On the other hand, the examples used throughout the book give a very focused view on the steps to take to implement web services in all possible ways. As mentioned before, the tools used in the examples of this book are really the latest developments on the market.

As the SOAP server, the Apache AXIS implementation is used. The invocation of web services is also demonstrated using the JAX-RPC and even the still to be released WSIF (Web Services Invocation Framework), the Framework originally developed by IBM, that has been donated to the Apache project.

If you share the frustration of being confused by the number of standards involved with web services, how they relate, and how to carry all this theoretical stuff towards a real implementation, this book will provide you with what you need.

Conclusion

I read quite a lot of books on technical subjects, mostly Java-related.

This book is among the ones that taught me the most lately.
Especially with a subject like web services, when many articles on small subsets of the subject are published, and the hype created is really cluttering your insight on it, it is great to have a book like this, that forms one single resource from which you can gain a clear picture on the whole.


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