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Author/s : William Brogden
Publisher : Sybex
Category : Misc. Java
Review by : Michael Ernest
Rating : 5 horseshoes</pre>
This book was rough going for me; I'm still not sure what it's about or what I gained from it.
I expected to read a) a vision of
SOAP's place in network computing, and b) how
Java applies to it. What I got was a sprawling discussion that included more than it left out -- UDDI, WDSL, .NET, DOM, SAX, XML-RPC, Jini, JMS, J2ME,
JDBC, JAF,
Tomcat. Some of these were covered by bullet points, or links to "more information," or term definitions, or tables of who's doing what. And I simply forgot what I was reading and started over two or three times.
There are dozens of snooped SOAP chatter listed in the book, which I think the reader is just supposed to pore over and "understand." For me, those listings support my conviction say either XML is a waste of time, or there's nothing to understand about it. I can count on one finger the books I have read about HTTP that show listing after listing of HTTP traffic; it doesn't explain itself.
The lack of direction and cohesion in this book makes it frustrating to read. I learned what SOAP is; after that, I'm unsure. Lots of things are covered, but without attaching significance to many of them, it's hard to say if that's good or bad.
More info at Amazon.com More info at Amazon.co.uk
