Originally posted by Pradeep Bhat:
1. Is the book for beginner or advances user ?Does the book cover Webservice basics?
This book is not for beginners. It's intended to be a companion book to existing beginner books. It's meant for practitioners or advanced web services architects who are interested in:
* any re-usable
patterns or experience
* a collection of cases/real life examples
* advanced topics in mainframe integration or internal integration
However, there is a refresher chapter (ch 3 technology overview, with some hands-on tutorial on XML schema, JAXP, JAX-RPC, WSDL) on the basics, which will be useful to beginners.
If the reader/audience is primarily IT management, chapter 2 (technology background, building business case) and chapter 3 (refresher tutorial on web services basics) will be appropriate.
2. What do you feel about the future of Web Services , particularly when it is used used in grid computing architecture(OGSI standards).
There are enormous potentials in enabling grid web services. Grid computing is getting more traction and visibility, both in research, education and financial services. I've just had a consulting experience with a British bank last week on the pros/cons of enabling grid web services for their legacy C++ applications (wrapped as JAX-RPC calls, running with multiple grid).
However, there are still many hypes about grid web services today. If you search the web, you'll notice some grid technologies are a mixture of hype about "glorified" task scheduler with shared memory, invocation of RPC-style web services from the grid scheduler, etc. Thus, you need to be cautious of what the grid web services' vision, and what grid web services can do today.
I also introduce some discussion of OGSI in p. 497 , with reference to
www.simc-in.org that shows some archives of technology updates, and case studies in applying them in the industry. Just continue to stay tuned to the URLs/references on p. 510 (e.g. gridforum.org, globus.org, simc-inc.org).
3. Which server do you recommed for learning webservices?
If you're fancy about open sources,
Tomcat + Apache Axis would be a good starting point. Axis has many good examples that can jumpstart to building web services. All tutorial examples in my book are deployed in Tomcat + Axis.
Sun
Java application server (previously Sun ONE application server) 7.x would be another good choice, as many field developers accredit it as the fastest
J2EE apps server, and the best reference implementation of J2EE so far. It's free download for developer license.
4. Does the book cover the JAX -RPC?
It covers JAX-RPC. Chapter 3 p. 93 and the tutorial pp. 137-146 has some coverage. Chapter 8 is a complete end-to-end case study that illustrate how JAX-RPC and JAXM are built. Ch 8 has some discussion of RPC-style and doc-style web services are architected and designed (e.g. section 8.4.3, and 8.4.5).
Pls note that JAX-RPC is now part of J2EE 1.4. What the book is missing is the coverage of WSI profile details, which were not finalized. Ch 3 p. 89 also notes that SAAJ, which is now part of J2EE 1.4, shares similar technology with JAXM.
5. What motivated you to write the book.
Pls refer to a separate posting.
In summary, it's my personal goal to write a book on how Java technologies are applied in the industry - aka case book, or collection of my past experience.
[ February 25, 2004: Message edited by: Ray Lai ]
