Praise for .NET Web Services

“Keith Ballinger has been ‘Mr. Web Services’ at Microsoft for as long as there were Web services. Anyone doing work on the Microsoft Web Services platform would do themselves a favor by reading this book, as Keith’s insights are unique.”

         —Bob Beauchemin, DevelopMentor

“This book is a very good introduction to Web services, providing enough specific information for a person to fully understand the principles and implementation issues of Web services . . . Ballinger clearly outlines the fundamental architectural topics that any organization looking to implement XML Web services should consider.”

         —Colin Bowern, Consultant, Microsoft Corporation

“This book provides information about all principal components of Webservices: transport protocol, interface definition and services discovery mechanisms, security and messaging infrastructure, as well as underlying technologies (XML, TCP/IP, HTTP). Description of each subject is comprehensive and complete; examples provide good illustration from the content.”

         —Max Loukianov, Solomio Corp.

.NET Web Services is the authoritative guide to designing and architecting better Web services using Microsoft technologies. Written by Keith Ballinger, a Program Manager for XML Web Services at Microsoft, this book explains what Web services are, why they exist, and how they work in .NET. Readers will gain a thorough understanding of the technologies that allows them to take full advantage of .NET.

The book opens with an introduction to Web services and Web services standards. It then explores .NET technologies and examines how the .NET Framework gives developers the tools they need to build Web service applications. The core of the book focuses on the key specifications that make up the Web services architecture, from HTTP to SOAP to WS-Security. .NET Web Services concludes with the author's expert advice on architecting and designing Web service applications.

Topics covered include:

• The features and pitfalls of Web services

• Web services standards

• Creating Web Services with ASP.NET

• Creating Web service clients

• XML serialization with .NET

• Extending Web services

• Transport protocols for Web services

• XML and XML Schemas

• SOAP

• Describing Web services

• Discovering Web services

• Messaging with Web services

• Securing Web services

• Advanced messaging

Best practices are illustrated throughout with full working examples as well as code samples using C# and ASP.NET Web services. A companion Web site at www.keithba.net includes all sample code from the book.

Books in the Microsoft .NET Development Series are written and reviewed by the principal authorities and pioneering developers of the Microsoft .NET technologies, including the Microsoft .NET development team and DevelopMentor. Books in the Microsoft .NET Development Series focus on the design, architecture, and implementation of the Microsoft .NET initiative to empower developers and students everywhere with the knowledge they need to thrive in the Microsoft .NET revolution.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 17 Ratings

Substandard: shallow, few examples, MANY errors!!! - 2005-05-21
Reviewer Rating:
This is one of the most disappointing books I have ever read. I have read a few books in the ".NET Development Series" before and have come to expect solid, easy to grasp, and useful information. This books fails on almost every account.

The explanations are inadequate. The author uses a lot of time to explain the obvious, while failing to explain more complex topics.

The language is really, really bad. An example: "Of course, there are many other applications of routing as well. As well, I fully expect that this specification will evolve over time."!!??

Maybe the most annoying thing about the book is all the dreadful typos and inconsistencies. I have never seen anything like it, and I cannot believe that anyone ever did any proofreading of this book. For example on page 35 he describes a very simple example of a Web Service, a class "TestClass" with one method "Add". On the next page is the image from Internet Explorer which shows what you see when you type the URL of the service on the server, the class is suddenly named "POClass". Later when he describes the SOAP Message for the service it is for another class altogether with a method "HelloWorld"???!!! In this example, it is easy to figure out what is wrong, and it is more annoying than anything else, but in other places where the material is not so easy to understand, the errors are harder to ignore.

Finally and maybe most importantly, the author fails to give any motivation for a lot of the things he does. For example, he describes how one in different ways (by using attributes, etc) can change the format of the soap messages for the service. However, he doesn't say a word about why one should prefer one format for the other.

No practical information to actually get you started - 2004-10-28
Reviewer Rating:
The author jumps around various topics, and constantly refers to SOAP standard section 5 or 7 in his descriptions. It looks as if he expect the readers to be fully conversant with the nuts and bolts of SOAP spec, and we all know this is a tall order.

Worst of all, he failed to put together even a single real world app to illustrate the best way to make use of web services, TODAY.

He talks about Web service technology as if the tech is an end onto itself.

Don't buy it, you know you don't have time to toil thru a dorky tech spec discussion, esp. when the spec itself is getting out-of-date very fast.

This is a horrible book. - 2006-03-01
Reviewer Rating:
Web service architecture is a big topic and it's not easy to explain well. Obviously the author attempted to explain it but may be due to limited amount of time, his explanation is very shallow and sometimes almost useless: on page 49, he briefly touches how to create object reference with ID/HREF combinations and promises to discuss the topic in Chapter 9 in "greater detail". In chapter 9, on page 183, yes, he revisited that topic but only with 3 short lines of "explanation" which is pretty much the same as that on page 49 - where is the "greater detail"?

The language is bad too: on page 72, "There's a convenient Add Web Reference dialog box...exactly for that kind of thing." What do you mean by "that kind of thing"? Are you writing a professional book or just an IM chat message? Besides, the discussion of creating clients with VS .NET is horribly shallow.

Avoid this book.

It is not a reference. It is only an overview. - 2005-01-17
Reviewer Rating:
Hi,

In the first chapters, where the Keith describes the protocols and underlying technologies of the XML WebServices, the reader gets more question marks in his head only. The explanations are very short. Actually there is no explanation, the author recommends to see the specifications foreach topic. For many things even there isn't any information.

As you read the book, you get the feeling that the author knows everything about web services, but he is not willing to show everything. Maybe he didn't have much time for the book, or had other things to do.

Kaan Ozturk

Very clear introduction to MS web service technologies - 2006-09-14
Reviewer Rating:
I'm a Java architect/developer with quite a bit of web service experience. I purchased this book to help me write MS-based web service clients to test interoperability. I found the presentation to be logically structured and very clear. The writing is some of the best technical writing I've seen. It quickly helped me figure out the basics of how MS's web service framework works.

Note this is an older book, so I imagine quite a few things have changed since it was published - although the code generated by the toolkit I just downloaded is compatable with what I see in the book so far. Also, as others have mentioned, this book does not contain complex, real-world examples.

If you are looking for an intro/overview of MS WS technologies, and are willing to hit the web for updates, this book is a good choice.

Browse Similar Topics

Top Level Categories:
Internet/Online

Sub-Categories:
Internet/Online > Web Services