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"Understanding Web Services Specifications and the WSE" By Jeannine Hall Gailey, Microsoft Press This is a great book for system architects who build complex,
distributed, advanced applications using XML Web services in .NET, or would
like to. While admittedly not a code-centric
tutorial guide, it does serve to clarify many of the questions a developer considering
the Microsoft .NET Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0 would have, and
demystifies many of the questions posed about interoperability between WSE versions
and across platforms like .NET and J2EE. Contrary to the criticism that some have unfairly labeled the book with,
I didn't find the material to be rehashed MSDN articles that would be otherwise
easily accessible on that site. Rather, author
Jeannine Hall Gailey gives an academic overview of
the areas for WSE 2.0 under development by those architecting the web service
model on a macro level (BEA, IBM, Microsoft, Sun, etc.). Instead of regurgitated programming articles,
Jeannine (whose body of work in writing about WSE and the high-end use of SOAP
in .NET environments is most impressive) presents a
complimentary collection of easy-to-follow articles on advanced uses for
extending SOAP's capabilities, using a writing voice
that's welcome and friendly. (You'll surely
appreciate this latter benefit, as the material can get quite complex at
times.) So rather than give you code to nail down a specific problem, an
overview of the web services model and of next-gen
apps relying on SOAP is examined. And
you'll more well-rounded and better off because of it. When used in combination
with the code found on her articles at MSDN, they make for a very effective
guide to helping you build powerful systems. At 232 pages, the book is a great quick read, giving the reader a
high-level understanding of many of the concepts being discusses and/or
enforced by the web services powers-that-be.
The major WS-* considerations such as attachments, security, reliable
messaging, coordination and policy enforcement are described. The book is written beautifully and organized
logically, with easy to understand hypothetical scenarios. The book makes mention of SOAP 1.2, and while it admits to leaning
towards the SOAP 1.1 spec for the moment, does take the time to mention the
differences between the two. There's
also a very healthy amount of information for two technologies you're likely to
have lots of questions about – encryption and DIME attachments. There was a terse mention of working with SOAP messages across SMTP,
and I would have liked to see more of a discussion on this topic. There's lots of good information about other
transport protocols like HTTP, TCP and UDP, but sadly, not much on SMTP for
building secure messaging systems over e-mail.
But I can't pin this minor shortcoming directly on the author –
the Web is currently sorely lacking such information outside the scope of
mentioning that SOAP can transport across SMTP. But aside from that, this book is a great read for those looking to
take SOAP to the next level and really leverage the WSE in their applications. --------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links
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