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Java and SOAP
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Author: Robert Englander
List Price: $39.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0596001754
Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates (15 May, 2002)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 90,017
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 2 out of 5
Nothing Special
This book came out from O'Reilly in Spring of 2002 about the same time they published Java Web Services. If these had been combined and editing together, they would have had a star book on their hands instead of two average books. I can't say anything particularly bad about this book, but nothing particularly good either. If you're getting started with Web Services using Java, this and the title above are both decent sources to get you going.
Rating: 4 out of 5
This book helped me out a lot...
If you are a Java developer and are wondering what all the hype is about surrounding web services and SOAP, you owe it to yourself to get this book. Robert Englander doesn't waste time trying to teach you Java first. He dives right in to what SOAP is, what the different related technologies are surrounding SOAP, and explanations on two different implementations of SOAP (Apache SOAP and GLUE). Once the introductions are complete, he starts with basic examples in both Apache and GLUE. Each chapter then builds upon those examples to cover more complex examples and situations. The examples are very well detailed, and the explanations are easy to understand. In addition, he covers how to write Java code to both call web services and expose your own Java code to be used as a web service. By the time you're done, you should have a good grasp on how it all works. The Apache implementation of SOAP is free for downloading at www.apache.org, so you can get all the tools you need to become proficient at this technology.This book was very valuable to me as I was working on a project involving web services. I was writing Java code on a platform that would allow for a user to enter a command and get information back from the server. The concept of web services was intriguing as it opened up a large set of possibilities for features I could implement. By using the information in this book, I was able to quickly get up to speed with a functional example that worked. I was then able to fill in gaps in my knowledge and expand my examples to connect with additional sources of data. Without the information in this book, it would have taken me a whole lot longer to figure it all out. For Notes/Domino 5 developers, you may not see a use for this information (at least at this level of detail) at this time. It's possible that you may want to write a Java agent for a Notes application that uses SOAP to get some data from a web service. I would encourage you to try that if possible. This would be much more applicable for someone who has started working with Websphere and is trying to build or consume web services. In my case, I was using it to allow Sametime to interact with web services. Some very cool stuff... Conclusion
If you're ready to branch out into the world of web services and want to write and/or use one, you should seriously consider getting this book. If you work through the examples and material, I am confident that you will end up being very successful in getting results in a short time frame.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Better than nothing
The SOAP protocol is relatively new, as is the software that
supports Java servers and SOAP. Not wanting to install
Apache, I installed Resin as my HTTP server and AXIS for
my SOAP protocol support. I've also installed Apache's
SOAP GUI.I got everything running to the point where I could run
sevlets. But attempting to run the SOAP remote procedure
call examples given in the book has been very frustrating.
In what directory should I install my servlet that provides
the functions that are called via SOAP/RPC? How can I
diagnose failures when things go wrong? This book is not
much help. Since no single software base exists to support HTTP, a Java
server and SOAP the author faces a difficult problem. This
problem could have been addressed by picking a software base
and then providing examples in terms of this base. I
recommend Resin (because it is easy to install and is light
weight), Axis (because it is standard) and the Apache SOAP
GUI (which the author does cover). The author also covers
a product called GLUE. As an Axis/Apache SOAP user I skipped
all the GLUE examples, so I think that the book would be better
without them (of course a GLUE user probably feels that way
about Apache). While this book provides a decent introduction on what SOAP is
and how it functions under Java, it is very frustrating that
simple examples are so difficult to run. The book would have
been much better if the author had stuck to a single platform
and then provided the necessary detail. This would frustrate
users who are not using the platform chosen in the book, but
as it is, the book is little help in the nuts and bolts of
Java/SOAP execution.
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