Reviews for SOA Using Java Web Services

1. Best book for Java Web Service I have ever read

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2009

   For my thesis, I have been searching different literatures and found this one out really helpful, Thanks to author Mark D. Hansen on explaining in detail about invoking Java Web service and diverse Java Web technologies.

2. Best book Java Web Services for programmers & technical architects

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2008

   I've been working through this book for a couple weeks now. It's very dense reading, not infrequently I am obliged to page back and reread a section because I missed something important. The author remarks in the foreword that it's not an easy subject; he's not joking. It isn't.
   
   That said, I have to say it's the most useful book I've found on actually programming these things. It focuses on SOA, which is to say a particular style of SOAP Web Services, but also contains a useful chapter on RESTful Web services.
   
   From the technical architecture POV I found Hansen's observations on the tradeoffs between REST and SOAP and upon which choices to make when wiring up SOAP Web Services.
   
   The problem with many Web Services books is that they are too simple. The show an example of how to write a greenfield Web Services app without tackling the real problem facing most developers: Web Services are primarily an integration tool, and systems integrators rarely have the luxury of doing greenfield development; they must hook together existing classes and schemas and this can be very difficult. Hansen shows how to solve the real problems.
   

3. Strong Medicine For Experienced Developers

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2008

   This is not a book for junior or intermediate Java developers looking to write their first web service. Nor is it a gradual introducion to the Web Services technology stack. Instead the book is aimed squarely at experienced developers who already know HTTP, SOAP, XML Schema, WSDL etc... and are still scratching their heads trying to make Web Services work in Java. The density of the material here is scary but the quality is superb. I've bought lots of Web Service books and this is the only one that was of practical use to me. Strongly recommended for those who seriously need to make SOA work.

4. Real world concerns for SOA Services with Java

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, July 12st, 2008

   Well I liked it for all the reasons the other reviewer didn't.
   
   I'm an architect trying to do SOA with business services defined by WSDL but interfacing to all sorts of legacy - java and much worse. So understanding what j2EE/JavaEE can do in terms of dispatching, binding to java classes etc helped me understand the intricacies of the problem in a lot more detail. I also liked the comparison with RESTful services.
   
   He didn't bore me to death about WSDL/HTTP/SOAP etc - good ! There are zillions of books and resources on that stuff already so why waste the trees.
   
   That's not to say its an easy read. However having read all the Erl books and bucket loads of others I found it quite refreshingly techie.
   

5. Disorganized presention of random information

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, April 12st, 2008

   Mark Hansen (author) is no doubt a smart guy, but it doesn't come across in this book. I bought this book hoping to learn how to develop web services using Java and JAX-WS. I have 10 years of industry experience, and have used Apache AXIS for Java web service development, but needed to learn JAX-WS instead.
   
   After having read only a few chapters I have decided not to waste anymore time on this book.
   
   The primary reason I don't like it is, that Mark apparently fails to understand what level a developer new to web services is at. Instead of building up the readers knowledge of web services from the ground up, Mark jumps around the topics. For instance, there are typically two ways to develop web services: Either you have some Java code and need a web service interface for it, or you have a WSDL and need Java code for it. The book states that often you actually have both Java code and a WSDL and need to bridge the gap between them. This is correct, no doubt. However, Mark uses this as a justification for *starting* out explaining this case, rather than build of the users understanding by first showing Java to WSDL, then WSDL to Java, then the bridging case. Just because the bridging case is the most important, it does not automatically mean that this is the place to start explaining the matter.
   
   Another reason I don't like this book is that it is not self contained. It takes up 600 pages, but doesn't even have chapters on WSDL, Schema, SOAP, HTTP, or any of the other protocols involved in web services. But hey, perhaps I just misunderstood the purpose of this book. It is definately not a web service beginners book!