Web Services book recommendation

[Dan Murphy]

Hi,

I'm an experienced enterprise Java developer, but know almost nothing about web services. I'm looking for a practical guide to Java web services development, but most of the books I've found on Amazon appear to be either very old or concerned more with architectural aspects of WS development.

What I'm looking for is a book that is up-to-date and covers practical WS development for experienced Java developers, but assumes no prior knowledge of web services? If no such book exists, then I'd be grateful for any online tutorial recommendations.

Thanks in advance for any recommendations you can provide.

Best Wishes,
Dan
[ February 03, 2008: Message edited by: Dan Murphy ]

[Ulf Dittmer]

The http://faq.javaranch.com/java/WebServicesFaq lists a number of books, as does the Bunkhouse: http://www.javaranch.com/bunkhouse/SOAP.jsp

I found the Mark Hansen book to be quite hands-on, with lots of code examples.

[Peer Reynders]

Have a look over the Web Services FAQ; it also has a books section.

Originally posted by Dan Murphy:
What I'm looking for is a book that is up-to-date and covers practical WS development for experienced Java developers, but assumes no prior knowledge of web services?

Those are difficult requirements. The web services space is currently split between the SOAP web service and RESTful web service arenas (not to mention POX (Plain old XML) over HTTP). SOAP web services currently have a wider established base and lots of add-on Business Process related protocols, but RESTful web services are gaining acceptance for pre-dominantly lighter-weight requirements. For SOAP web services the Java enterprise APIs are split between JAX-RPC for existing J2EE deployments and JAX-WS for new Java EE deployment, not to mention all the variations that are introduced by Axis, Axis 2, Apache CXF, Spring Web Services etc. For RESTful web services Restlet is available and JSR-311 (Jersey) is being specified for potential inclusion in Java EE 6; some initial support for RESTful web services is available in JAX-WS.

Web services tend to be architectural in nature as they were conceived to support messaging between otherwise incompatible systems; they are supposed to operate on a higher level of abstraction than "distributed components". Web services have only more recently been used in a non-architectural role for RIA support; this niche is usually filled by POX over HTTP, JSON over HTTP, or RESTful web services, less often by SOAP web services.

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[ February 03, 2008: Message edited by: Peer Reynders ]