Book Review: "Web Services: A Technical Introduction" (2/2) - exploring XML

Book Review: "Web Services: A Technical Introduction"

Appendices

The book concludes with programming appendices that introduce XML markup, .NET and Java Web services implementaions. Appendices B and C contain complete, working examples of Web services and Web service clients built using the standards and tools dicussed throughout the book. The book does not cover details of .NET and Java but refers to the respective sister books from the same publisher instead. Online resources are available at the Prentice-Hall Web site for this book series.

Structure

Like most technology books these days, the book has been written by a team of authors. The Deitel series is written by employees of Deitel & Associates, Inc., a training and authoring company. This ensures that all chapters folow the same structure with an outline at the beginning, and a summary and resource listing at the end. The writing style is homogenous so one cannot tell which chapter was written by which author. Overall the headings clearly denote a certain topic so the book can be easily skimmed through, and individual topics skipped or re-read at will.

The book gently moves through the different perspectives of the various stakeholders in the Web services game: computer scientists, business customers, and software vendors. The language remains consistent with minimal jargon in all three areas. This, together with the clear structure of the outline, makes selective reading possible.

Conclusion

The book "Web Services: A Technical Introduction" by Deitel for Prentice Hall is a promising opener for the introductory series to various technologies. The book gives a broad overview of business models, vendors, technologies and products in the Web services space. Pointers to more in-depth resources are given at the end of each chapter. Anybody looking for a well-structured high-level overview on the topic should consider buying this book.

Produced by Michael Claßen

URL: https://www.webreference.com/xml/column79/2.html
Created: Apr 14, 2003
Revised: Apr 14, 2003