Product Description

Teach yourself how to write and deploy XML Web services for Microsoft .NET-one step at a time. XML Web services can vastly simplify application integration and interoperability, but developing them requires an understanding of many different programming techniques and technologies. This step-by-step tutorial delivers expert, task-based instruction designed to help you apply what you already know about C#, Microsoft Visual Basic, and other object-oriented programming (OOP) languages to XML Web services development-at the pace that best suits you. Topics include XML Web services architecture; writing, testing, and debugging Web services; and consuming Web services asynchronously through clients or with HTTP; and advanced topics such as managing Web service state, security, SOAP, and .NET remoting. The book features skill-building lessons and practice exercises, with plenty of examples in both the C# and Visual Basic .NET languages.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #305464 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 430 pages

Customer Reviews

SMOOTH-SAILING INFO-BOOK: FOR BEGINNERS
"Microsoft .NET XML Web Services Step-by-Step" is a straightforward text, which beginners and intermediates should enjoy learning from. Everything about this book (including its .NET Components coverage) is simplified. Anybody who has a vague understanding of XML and WSDL can cope comfortably with it. It is that reader-friendly!
The book offered flexible presentations on the correlations of XML and .NET programming. In fact, its primary objective is to enable readers understand the interdependence, which exist between the two technologies.
This is a fine, smooth-sailing, info-book; only that it has very little to offer non-beginners. Advanced learners need not waste money on it.

Excellent tutorial for beginners.
I am half way through the book and I like it. It is a good tutorial that will hold your hand and help you taking your first steps on the planet WebServices. The authors selected an interesting and practical example subject, validating credit card numbers, so you will not need a lot of coffee to keep you awake.

The examples are so simple, so if you are an experienced OO programmer, keep in mind that the goal was introducing the subject not implementing the code in the most elegant way.

On the other hand, the authors followed a naming convention from hell. I am not just talking about casing but also the logical selection of class names. For example, In chapter 6 the authors were explaining the subject of sending objects and returning objects from/to web service. So they built a class and named it "ValidationObject". I don't want to sound like an OO lawyer here but the class is not an object; Objects are instances of the class.

Anyway, I guess a name like "CreditCard" would've made much more sense, after all it is a credit card we are passing around. Variables were named like this x_object, o_card_type.

Personally, I couldn't continue without building a names map. I just recorded each name and to which object it was given on a piece of paper.

A word of advice; this is not the type of book you want to come back for a second read hoping that it will give you more understanding of the subject. So make sure you will take notes and summarize the important facts of each chapter.

Good Overview But Becoming Dated
This book was a fantastic overview of how XML Web Services are encapsulated by the .NET platform and the services provided by the numerous APIs. It offers step-by-step examples that lead you through the various facets of producing and consuming Web Services. It does not delve too deeply into many of the services provided by .NET for bettor or worse.

Four years ago I would have rated this book a 4 star or higher, however, the examples are based upon legacy .NET 1.1 and Visual Studio 2003. Like myself, I would presume that the majority of developers are at least working with .NET 2.0 and VS 2005 now. In addition the current release of both is at 3.5 and 2008 respectively.

The core material of the book is still very much relevant. The examples for how to configure IIS, setup and copy web projects, and manipulate code in the IDE have changed significantly between product releases though. I didn't mind that much because it forced me to have to figure out how to apply the same task in the newer environment. For me that was OK, but beginners may be frustrated by that.

A few notes on the content and examples:

1. In the code exercises, I found that it would have been much more helpful to put the steps for importing classes (C# using / VB import statements) at the beginning of the code exercises instead of at the end so the person typing in the code could better make use of Visual Studio's Intellisense feature.

2. There was a lot of rote copy / retyping the same material from chapter to chapter. The author tried to minimize with copy instructions in each chapter. I felt as though the examples could have been modularized and reused better.

3. The Microsoft UDDI site that chapter 9 discusses no longer functions as described in the text. I skipped it completely.

4. Chapter 15 about consuming Web Services asynchronously was the one that probably had the most version differences between .NET 1.1 and 2.0. The way that callbacks are handled changed dramatically. This was once again a good learning experience for me to figure out how to make it work in 2.0

5. Code examples were generally good, however, the authors coding style for variable names was not all that intuitive. Maybe a short mention of naming convention would have been nice (e.g. what the 'p_' and 'x_' prefixes meant)

Overall, it is a good book and I would recommend it highly if you are still developing on .NET 1.1 / VS 2003, but less so if not. Hopefully, the authors will publish a newer edition sometime soon.