The developer’s guide to understanding and implementing advanced Web services specifications, including from-the-source insights on Microsoft Web Services Enhancements 2.0

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 9 Ratings

Most up-to-date information on the WS-Specs and WSE out righ - 2004-01-29
Reviewer Rating:
This book gives readers a brief introduction to WS-Specs like WS-Security, WS-Policy, WS-Attachments, WS-SecureConversation, WS-Trust and WS-Transactions, and shows how to use the WSE (based on early adopter 2.0 code) in conjunction with these specs. This book is good for someone who is a beginning to intermediate web services programmer, who wants to learn how to use the WSE to secure their web services. I thought Jeannine did a good job of laying out the basics, with enough code samples to walk the reader through. It does require basic knowledge of .NET coding, since the code samples use C#. I'm looking forward to downloading the sample code - although it's based on a beta of the 2.0 code, and all we can download right now is the tech preview. There is no other book out there right now with the 2.0 code, or the latest on the specs, which are still in the process of changing.

Great review of WS concepts - 2004-04-30
Reviewer Rating:
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.

Very informative introduction to Web Services. - 2004-01-28
Reviewer Rating:
This book really increased my understanding of the subject WSE SDK. The code samples helped me understand more about the WS-specifications. The author explains the potential of WS-security and WS-policy and shows examples of how this can be implemented.

Poorly organized, utterly useless - 2005-03-11
Reviewer Rating:
First, this book is very poorly organized. I bought it with a hope that it would at least discuss a few things about web services, but it only devoted a few pages to each of the WS-Standards. The entire rest of the book was case studies and examples, which were all very poorly documented. I will say one thing in favor of this book, all of the code samples had LINE NUMBERS! Who would have thought of a great idea like that! I certainly hope other publishers start using line numbers to reference code samples, but I didn't buy this book for a bunch of line numbers. I bought it to UNDERSTAND the WS-Specifications, which this book did nothing at all to help with.

Hardly worth your time - 2005-11-11
Reviewer Rating:
If there was such a thing as a pre-alpha release of a book then, this is it. Granted, at the time its writing WSE 2.0 was in pre-beta, but the author could have covered lots of material to make the book worth it's sticker price by explaining the concepts behind the WS-* standards.

In my opinion, this book is work in progress. You would be better of spending your time on MSDN.

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