Understanding Web Services: XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Eric Newcomer's "Understanding Web Services" provides for a solid theoretical overview into the world of the new web technologies, including XML, WSDL, SOAP and UDDI. For a newcomer into the field, this book is a good start to understanding to what these technologies are and what they can do for business.
THE CONTENTS:
Here are the topics that Newcomer addresses:
1.Introduction to Web Services (XML, WSDL, SOAP and UDDI)
2.XML - Describing Information
3.WSDL - Describing Web Services
4.SOAP - Accessing Web Services
5.UDDI - Registering Web Services
6.ebXML
7.Other Web Service technologies
8.How to Implement
THE ANALYSIS:
Overall, this book is a great teaching and learning tool to the basics of web services. Newcomer does a fine job of describing the various technologies and trying to "dumb" down the technology to describe how it works. One of the great things about the book is the "margin" notes on each page that highlight the definitions and key concepts that he tries to highlight. This makes the book easy to follow along with and helps to reinforce the concepts. Overall, this is great for a textbook.
However, keep in mind that the subject is very technical so if you are not a techie there are parts where you WILL get lost. Overall though, you still come away with a good understanding of what these technologies are and how they can help your business.
THE VERDICT:
Overall, Newcomer does a fine job of covering the various technologies and issues that deal with web services and how they can be applied to business. While the subject is technical and you may got buried in some parts the book's style is still easy to follow. This book was used as a text for an e-commerce web services course I took during the Fall of 2002. Whether you are studying this subject independently or whether you are an instructor looking to use this book for your course, Newcomer's "Understanding Web Services" is a good choice.
Highly Recommended

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This book introduces the main ideas and concepts behind core and extended Web services technologies and provides students with a primer for each of the major technologies that have emerged in this space. In addition, Understanding Web Services summarizes the major architectural approaches to Web services, examines the role of Web services within the .NET and J2EE communities, and provides information about major product offerings from Microsoft, IBM, IONA, HP, Sun, BEA, Oracle, and others. Key topics include: XML facilities for structuring and serializing data, how WSDL maps services onto communication protocols and transports, WSDL support for RPC-oriented and document-oriented interactions and UDDI data formats.

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