Distributed Computing Books

The book is dated, and some of the examples, like the ones using Python are out of sync with current libraries. But, overall, the book is still valuable.It begins with a nice forward from an XML-RPC insider - Dave Winer;he was intimately involved in the evolution of the XML-RPC spec and you get a rare glimpse into the discussions that resulted in the technology spec - something that you rarely find in tech books. The next best thing about the book are the authors - they are totally in charge of the subject being developers themselves and experienced authors. With reasonable examples,tips and insights on XML-RPC - the technology itself, plus various language implementations of XML-RPC libraries, this book written on an under hyped and flawed,but successful loose integration and web services technology is a good read. Apart from sections explaining the protocol itself, the major portion of the book is devoted to Java,Perl, and Python implementations of the standard, integrating web applications with XML-rpc using PHP,and bridging ASP and COM.

Not many people are aware of how the whole idea behind SOAP and, later, Webservices, started from XML-RPC. It covers some interesting background information on how XML-RPC was born, and good coverage of its strengths and shortcomings, plus examples in five different languages (Perl, Python, ASP, PHP, Java)

Good coverage but a bit repetitive since it explains
the same thing for each of several languages. Only
read the chapters you need... Sadly XML/RPC seems
to be losing ground to .NET/SOAP which is a shame
coz RPC is much simpler and less bandwidth intensive.

This book explains fully how to use XML-RPC in five languages: Java, PHP, Perl, Python, and ASP. Becuase XML-RPC is so simple to use (I got it working for both Java and PHP), it does not take much explanation to set up this technology and actually use it. This book is a good up-to-date reference for this technology, which will has been established and is being implemented in more and more languages as time progresses, making this technology an alternative to CORBA.
This is a small book, because the subject is very easy and fast to learn. By using the Universal Language XML, This technology enables programs in one language to call procedures in programs in another language across the internet, regardless of firewalls, because it runs on HTTP.
Some of the possibilities of using XML-RPC are in SOAP applications, distributed applications, even internet games.

overall an okay book. charpter 3 is poorly written (no complete example showing how to use servlet as XML RPCserver! perhaps the author have never done it himself) the reader should wait for a better book on this topic.

I have only just started reading about SAP. However, I was looking for more than just a review of GUI screens and the buttons on them. I was looking for explanations, perhaps a short overview. Many of the screen shots did not exactly match the words associated with them. They showed the 'default' SAP screen rather than the parameters and options discussed in the text. There were several mistakes on the screens. Buy another SAP BASIS or SAP Administration book other than this one. It is far overpriced in relation to its content. Others are available at half the price of this used book.

In some places that the book is advertised it is misleading - touting the book as SAP for dummies when actually it is a book on SAP System Administration only. Although it may adequately cover the System Administration (Basis) aspects the book is not helpful for basic SAP functionality - I had more luck with "Teach Yourself SAP in 24 hours" for general SAP.

I just cracked open this book five minutes ago. I'm new to the world of SAP and the aggravation the book has spared me has been well worth the price.

This should give you a hint that the book is well-organized and easily accessible. A little familiarity with SAP is handy, but I don't think it's necessary.

I didn't think it was possible to have a Dummies book for SAP, but it seems that Joey and Jim did it. As an experienced basis admin I read with skepticism, but I truly believe this is a valuable asset for any technical resource looking to venture into the vast world of SAP. Joey provides comical yet expert commentary that would allow anyone new to this difficult landscape to get a leg up. Thanks for the enjoyable and educational read. When are you coming out with SAP for Advanced Dummies?

This is an excellent book for both starters in sap R/3 Basis and the gurus in basis administration. I have been doing basis administration for over 2 years now and found this book not only interesting but very helpful in my daily work as a senior basis administrator.My advice for any one that need a general knowledge of sap basis admin or need trouble shooting book to guide you in your job is to get this book. It is very helpful and surely an investment to your career.

Henry.

Working at a top 5 technology consulting firm, and seeing the everyday hassels of PC's, Citrix's turn-key solution in the next big thing. I was highly anticpating this book and it did not dissapoint. It came complete with references for other companies that use WinFrame and did a pretty good job of describing the technology at work. (even a novice could understand this technology) Good book!

Forget TURN-KEY! Citrix and Microsoft constantly point the finger at each other when an error occurs.

Metaframe is a neat IDEA, but it just does NOT work!

Working at a top 5 technology consulting firm, and seeing the everyday hassels of PC's, Citrix's turn-key solution in the next big thing. I was highly anticpating this book and it did not dissapoint. It came complete with references for other companies that use WinFrame and did a pretty good job of describing the technology at work. (even a novice could understand this technology) Good book!

As a VAR that implements financial software on NT systems this book served as a real insight and guide into the Citrix methodology for implementing an effective method of accessing centralized data. The book also brought out what it takes to maintain the system for an end user in terms that they can understand - dollars and hours.

Because of this book we were able to make the decision to implement the system easier. After implementation in our college we have used this book as our instructional text both for students and systems operators.

My context is as a student researching Thin Client computing. This book provides excellent coverage of Winframe. However, it is very Microsoft-centric with comments on migrating from "legacy" Unix systems to NT. YMMV.

It has 13 chapters with approximately 6 Lessons in each chapter. The first 7 chapters deal with properly designing a database (and some server stuff). There is much more to it than you think, and believe me, everyone needs to learn how, it's much more than just creating a table and some querys. The last 6 chapters deal with Publishing your database on the web using Visual Basic 5.0.

In addition, each lesson has a quiz at the end of it (and the answers in the back) to help you grasp the concept of each lesson. Also, at the end of each lesson there are excersises to complete that will help you apply the information from the lesson.

All in all, it's about how you learn. I think his book does a good job of walking you through each lesson and showing you how to develop a web database. I think this book would make a very good College textbook.

I just got done with this book and I must compliment the authors for writing one of the very best technical books that I have ever read. Their step-by-step approach to this otherwise deep subject makes Web-database development look like a piece of cake.

I also noticed that another reader had criticized this book for putting a lot of focus on database design and searching techniques. To me, this focus is one of the strongest points of this book. I didn't believe that one can design fast and efficient Access-based Web applications until I read the database chapters of this book and implemented those powerful techniques.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn the secrets behind Web-database application design and development.

I had hoped for a better book on Visual Basic and web development, however this book spends 5 out of 13 chapters (more than 1/3 of the book) on how to use MS-Access. Also, I had trouble downloading the additional needed software, and the book was no help at all. Stick with the 'Visual Basic 6.0 Interactive Course' book (5-Star rating) and a different book on web development.

I can't add much to the other reviews they are pretty accurate. I do want to point out that the online portion of this book no longer exists and that the publisher nor Amazon points this out when they sell you the book. Instead you are directed to the SAMS online learning site which of course does not include material ffor this book. I would not purchase it on principle because I felt that I was decieved as to what I was purchasing.

In general, the authors did a great job of covering win-cgi, DAO, Visual Basic, Access and Website web server. I was able to set up all the examples and make them work and got a good dose of building and querying Access db. The organization and presentation of material is in the top 5% of development books that I have read.

My take-away from this book is that VB/win-cgi is not the most elegant way to webify a database. The win-cgi/CGI32.BAS framework is a real strange kluge. I found myself constructing a flow diagram to put it all into perspective so I could follow the process from start to finish. This would have been nice to have in the book.

I have worked with ASP/ADO at the low end and Sapphire Web at the hi end, and from a cost/benefit point of view, believe there are better ways to go for NT web development. I make this assumption on the sheer complexity of the win-cgi/CGI32.BAS framework and question its performance, scaleability and extensibility. For a low volume, non-mission critical application, its probably okay.

That said, you may want to consider investing your time looking at M/S Interdev, VB6.0, Java tools, ColdFusion or some of the other web/db technologies on the market. Proprietary issues asside, I think that ADO is an elegant solution for the money. It comes down to how much you can afford to buy vs how much time you are willing to invest in development and maintenance.

Kieran has obviously grasped Microsoft's complex connectivity problems. They are explained in a clear and easily digested fashion. If only all computer books were as interesting.

I found the content repetitive and the points laboured. The information provided could have been easily presented in 10 pages. Instead the author attemps to over-complicate the topic and confuse the reader. I'm not sure who he is trying to impress, but he didn't impress this reader. E-mail connectivity is an important technology. Getting it right can be the difference between a low maintenance, efficient, fast infrastructure and a painfully slow, troublesome and unreliable one. Unfortunatly this book only succeeds in clouding the issues involved.

This book provides a good overview of how the Exchange servers talk to each other and how the connectors function.

It's not just another connector book which shows screenshots, but rather it discusses how Exchange can work in bigger corporate environments attached to a backbone.

Worth a read.

Bill.

I bought this book expecting it to cover a much wider area of connectivity.

It focuses on X.400 and particulary SMTP connectivity, not what I really wanted. But it does cover those areas really well.

As well, as just looking at Exchange, the author covers more related technology areas. Good information from the real world.

I bought this book based on my experience that the Digital Press series offers the best books on email in the industry. Kieran McCorry meets that challenge! His writing easily matches that of Redmond, Rhoton, Collin, Avolio and Vixie.

Nutshell review - If you want to know all about denial of service attacks then this is an excellent book to start with. Well written, easy to understand and excellent coverage of the topic.

Your take on this book really depends on where you are sitting. The authors lucidly describe what a Denial of Service attack is. More to the point, the book then goes into an explanation of its more dangerous variant - the Distributed Denial of Service [DDoS] attack. The book is really about the latter; not the simple DoS. We see how DDoS evolved rapidly from 1999 to 2005, with the number of computers hijacked to become agents for an attack expanding from hundreds to over a hundred thousand. And how it no longer seems to be done by joyriding hackers just seeking a thrill. Now, it may actually be a business; a major branch of malware.

You should have a reasonable background in understanding TCP/IP, to appreciate the book's technical discussions. For example, if you see mention of the TTL field in a header, you should already know what it means.

The book explains several postulated countermeasures to DDoS. Nifty ideas like traceback and pushback. Or perhaps doing an entropy count of good and bad packets, to help distinguish between them. The problem is that none of these are truly effective. DDoS is an unsolved problem. So if you are a cracker, this is good news. Not so for sysadmins.

But there is something else. Perhaps DDoS is fundamentally insolvable, under the current IPv4 and current router capabilities. But maybe this field is still young. What is a problem for many could be a chance for you, as a researcher or inventor.

'Internet Denial of Service' (IDOS) is an excellent book by expert authors. IDOS combines sound advice with a fairly complete examination of the denial of service (DoS) problem set. Although the authors write from the DoS point of view, as a network security monitoring advocate I found myself agreeing with many of their insights. Since there are no other books dedicated to DoS, I was very pleased to find this one is a powerful resource for managers and technicians alike.

IDOS features some of the best minds on DoS research available. Everyone has heard of Dave Dittrich, but I found the work of lead author Jelena Mirkovic to be particularly valuable. Peter Reiher and long-time DoS researcher Sven Dietrich also give the project considerable weight. All four authors work for or with universities, and IDOS reflects this academic connection by frequently citing papers and DoS research. For example, chapter 7 describe DoS mitigation approaches and Appendix C examines the best available data on DoS techniques. I would encourage other authors to make similar references to the academic community and not write in a literary vacuum.

By making references to outside works, IDOS successfully avoids repeating material published elsewhere. Chapter 6 was probably my favorite section, including much distilled wisdom and advice on responding to DoS attacks. I welcomed the authors' frequent recommendations to collect session and full content data. It is often impossible to detect and respond to attacks without this sort of network-based evidence. This point is often lost on vendors or consultants who lack experience performing incident response.

I had minor problems with the book. First, I would have liked more technical detail in chapter 6. For example, it would have been nice to see examples of system metrics from nodes or routers under DoS attack. Specific advice on host tuning techniques would also have been useful, e.g., make changes X, Y, or Z on FreeBSD or Cisco IOS to better resist DoS conditions. I was also slightly disappointed the authors did not base their discussions of commercial products in Appendix B on hands-on evaluations. I understand the problem with meeting this objective, however.

I did not have any problems with the legal or concluding chapters (8 & 9). I think the earlier three-star reviewer found himself on the wrong side of the 1999 "RST scan" controversy discussed on p. 52 and may not have been happy by the (correct) stance taken by IDOS.

I highly recommend every security professional read IDOS. It's a convenient and illuminating discussion of a problem that will never disappear. This book will prepare you to do battle with DoS attacks, and for that I am thankful.

There are obviously a multitude of ways an attacker can take your site down. One way is via a denial of service attack. There's a new book out that covers just that attack in great detail: Internet Denial Of Service - Attack and Defense Mechanisms by Jelena Mirkovic, Sven Dietrich, David Dittrich, and Peter Reiher (Prentice Hall).

Chapter list: Introduction; Understanding Denial of Service; History of DoS and DDos; How Attacks Are Waged; An Overview of DDoS Defenses; Detailed Defense Approaches; Survey of Research Defense Approaches; Legal Issues; Conclusions; Glossary; Survey of Commercial Defense Approaches; DDoS data; References; Index

Going into this book, I can say I knew about the basics of a Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. What I didn't understand is how sophisticated they've become. The book covers (in deep detail) how bot or zombie networks are developed and utilized to launch these types of attacks. I didn't realize that it's relatively easy to acquire a bot network of over 100000 clients who can flood a site with packets. And it's not even necessary to use them all at once. Attacks can start with a fraction of the clients, and then escalate as the victim attempts to filter packets or add bandwidth. It's a scary thing. The authors also cover the various issues involved in the defense of these types of attacks. Filtering might work, but it can be difficult to find the correct filtering parameters that don't also drop legitimate traffic. And due to the distributed nature of the attack, it can be nearly impossible to find the culprit, and worse, to prevent it from happening again.

Walking away from this book, you don't get a warm, fuzzy feeling about the current situation. Regardless of what steps you take, there is no current sure-fire method for defending these attacks. But by reading Internet Denial of Service, you'll be far more prepared to understand what's going on and what realistic options do exist. Better yet, it also gives you the steps you need to take to prepare your site for this type of incursion beforehand. If you've mapped out your plan ahead of time, you can definitely minimize (to some extent) the damage that can occur.

This is a good read for any security professional tasked with security and availability of an organizational website. Reading this now could save your job later...

Internet Denial of Service

I certainly enjoyed reading this book, in fact I started looking at it during the work day and couldn't wait for everyone to leave at quitting time so I could finish it. It seems to have a bit of trouble finding its niche, most of the time it has the feel of a research paper, but from time to time there are amazingly practical tidbits. If you are looking for a how to stop denial of service, step by step, buy the cup of coffee from Borders and leaf through the book and make your decision carefully. If you are a researcher in the USA interested in Internet protocols and US law and response, this is a must read, must have. If you are truly seeking to understand what zombie style distributed denial of service is and is capable of, buy the book and read it three times. My response team worked closely with one of the authors, David Dittrich from 1999 - 2001 and if there is a "been there, done that" individual when it comes to malicious code, he would be that person.

This is not a book for a novice, but if you know your way around a network and know a bit about routing, there are a number of helpful illustrations and code segments that drive the points home.

I realize I gave the book three stars even though I liked it a lot and that is primarily because the book is much weaker in the two final chapters, 8 and 9. You just can't throw issues like law, ethics, jurisdiction, evidence collection, and estimation of damages on the table, write a couple paragraphs and zoom on, someone could get hurt. For the right reader, this can be a wonderful resource.

While the book does a very good job of laying out options for building distributed environments, it falls far short in some critical areas. Neither directories, security, PKI, nor directory enabled networks (DEN) are adequately covered. As a matter of fact only security receives any coverage at all.

Security has 11 entries in the index, but none go beyond defining the role of security. There is no mention of how to implement security in a distributed environment.

Directories are not even listed in the index. Directories are crucial to the management and security of networks in a distributed environment. The directory enabled network (DEN) initiative is a standard interoperable approach that will be widely supported (if vendors are to be believed). DEN is absolutely necessary if distributed networks are to provide the reliability and security needed by enterprises.

Closely related to DEN is public key cryptography (PKI) which does not even show up in the index. Enterprises building extra-nets will need the security provided by the use of PKI.

These omissions cause me to give a low rating to an otherwise good book on distributed computing.

As someone who spent 24 years in "legacy" environments and who is now in the distributed world I found this book to be some of the most complete guides in print to making the transition.

What I really liked about this book is how the authors skillfully blended the descriptions of technologies in the distributed world with the methods and approach that characterize the "legacy" world. This is because distributed computing has a lot to offer from a technology point of view, but management of distributed systems lags behind the "legacy" world. My move was a lot like migrating from a predictable world of methods, processes and procedures to the wild west.

Some of the specific highlights were: very clear description of client/server systems and the underlying components. I personally gained a lot from the discussions on object technology, building distributed applications, and building extensible systems. The latter was especially useful to me because it exposed me to COM, Java and XML, and how these fit into the picture. Coming from a world where the standard buzzwords were CICS, JCL and the such I needed to fully understand the world in which I now work, and this book gave me an understanding of the technical underpinnings and their strengths and weaknesses.

Where this book blends the "legacy" and distributed worlds is in the chapters that deal with managing distributed systems. I gained two deep insights from this section: (1) managing distributed systems is a quantum leap in complexity from managing host-based systems, and (2) the processes and tools used to manage today's distributed systems have not reached the maturity of those that we used twenty years ago in the mainframe world. The authors did an excellent job of pointing out the challenges and realities of distributed systems management, and did a wonderful job of tying this to service level management using core business objectives as the bridge.

This book is truly a manager's guide that covers a lot of ground in technology and processes. It is too high-level for hand's-on technical folks who have worked in distributed environments, but is a wonderful source of information for people like myself who spent most of their career in mainframes and need to evolve into this wild environment called distributed computing. I enjoyed the book, gained a lot from it and recommend it to my former colleagues who are still in the "legacy" environment.

Chapter 7 of this book is excellent at covering the issues that are key to bridging the gap between IT and the Business Unit.

IT needs to measure "success" in terms of business-meaningful terms - this book (and chapter 7 in particular) helps redefine IT success and focus IT on the issues critical to business alignment in the coming years.

Ptak et al. have succeeded in cutting through the dark and mysterious world of information technology to present a thorough guide to all interested in the current state of enterprise computing. It is a practical and insightful work that will aid all in tackling these evolving and complex issues.

This book addresses the communication gap between business managers and technical IT managers. With minimal technical jargon it explains the issues and trends that IT wrestles with and tells in an understandable way how managers on both sides of the fence can more effectively work with and use their IT staff. It discusses the challenges of product selection without sounding preachy or being a vendor shell.

Derek Ball brings PB to developers in a comprehensive, straight-forward manner. The well-done organization, format, and figures make this guide worth reading from beginning to end. The Developer's Tips and appendices are truly useful tools and compliment the main text. Also, this guide's thorough index makes it an excellent reference. The only reason I didn't give it a ten is that it's weak on external DLL information, but then so is every other PB book I've found. Of the current PB books available this is, by far, the one I use most.

I found this to be an excellent book covering many intermediate and advanced topics. This book is definitely not for beginners unless you already have programming experience using Visual Basic, etc. The coverage of changes in PowerBuilder 6.0 with it's migration issue warnings is very helpful. I'm looking forward to using items mentioned in our applications. This will definitely be one of my well used books.

Derek Ball brings PB to developers in a comprehensive, straight-forward manner. The well-done organization, format, and figures make this guide worth reading from beginning to end. The Developer's Tips and appendices are truly useful tools and compliment the main text. Also, this guide's thorough index makes it an excellent reference. The only reason I didn't give it a ten is that it's weak on external DLL information, but then so is every other PB book I've found. Of the current PB books available this is, by far, the one I use most.

I read the version 5.0. It was an overview of PowerBuilder. Good for the managers but not good fro the programmers. The book was too shallow on PowerBuilder's strong features.

The content of the book was good. Overall I am pleased with it. The one flaw I have with the book is the number of errors in it. These errors range from spelling errors to grammatical errors to mislabeling of figures (charts) to errors in some of the coding examples. I would have expected the book to have been edited a little better than it was. I would have recommended the book but the publishers need to do a better job editing future editions.

This is a good reference/resource book.
Amazon is always great to deal with as well.

The only problem I had was that it was shipped unwrapped, in an open box, no packing, so the corners of the book were damaged. Unusal for Amazon.

I want to see detail in book power builder 9

If you are an advanced PB programmer you will not find much here unless you have been stuck in versions 6.5 (or maybe even 7 but less so) and earlier. The authors give a reasonable overview of the new IDE and source control integration. There is also discussion of the newer features such as Powerbuilder Native Interface, XML datawindows, command line deployment, and error handling. Over 200 pages are devoted to database connectivity which may be of interest if you support multiple platforms.

Aside from some minor factual errors and the occasional typo, the information and examples are concise and to the point (although many leave out even rudimentary error checking which is vital in any 'real' application).

I bought the book since there haven't been any 'real' PB books since version 7 and this one details the new IDE.

Authors

The 2 main authors of this book are Bruce Armstrong and Millard F. Brown III. If you are readers of the PBDJ magazine you will probably be familiar with these names. Both have also been involved with previous PowerBuilder book releases, are members of TeamSybase and have presented at user conferences around the world. Other contributing authors include a list of well known PowerBuilder experts such as Dave Fish, Bill Green, John Olsen, Roy Kiesler et al. The credentials of all the authors and co-authors of this book read like a Who's Who in PowerBuilder.

Book Overview

There are numerous books now available on PowerBuilder - this one does not aim to compete with these but to plug the gap in contents covered. PowerBuilder 9 - Advanced Client/Server Development zeroes in on some of the new features in this version including PBNI (native interface), XML datawindows, reworking of the source control interface, improved IDE and automated application builds using OrcaScript. Other subjects covered include PFC, an in-depth look at database connectivity, advanced coding and DW techniques, 3rd party tools and OLE.

Target Audience

The user level of this book is Intermediate - Advanced. The back cover states that this book is aimed at developers who know and use PowerBuilder and are looking to maximize their productivity. I would say that about half of the book succeeds in its aim, covering familiar subjects such as datawindows but with more detail and giving a few tips and techniques; covering new PB9 subjects and giving some useful productivity tips on the IDE for example. The remainder of the book serves as a point of reference such as the 200 pages on database connectivity which would be very useful for users developing for multiple database platforms.

Content

I would split the book into 3 main areas - an advanced look at existing features; an introduction to new PB9 features and a database connectivity reference.

The advanced look at existing features didn't uncover anything new for me but would serve as a useful reminder to someone who hasn't used PowerBuilder for a while. There are some good real life clear examples with supporting code and a few undocumented and therefore unsupported techniques.

The chapters on the new PB9 features would have been better if they had been more detailed. For example the chapter on XML datawindows assumes you know XML which is fair enough but it is a short and not very detailed chapter. In fact the PowerBuilder user guide provided with the product is much more detailed and useful than the chapter in this book. No tips or techniques are given in the chapter either. The chapter on the IDE and source control integration is useful especially if you are coming from PowerBuilder 7 and haven't used PowerBuilder 8.

The section on Database Connectivity is a useful reference point if you are developing for multiple database platforms but doesn't fit very well into the title of PowerBuilder 9 - Advanced Client Server Development. It does give a good amount of detail on an area that has previously not been covered particularly well in the past.

Writing Style

The writing style of the chapters vary because of the number of different authors. In general most of the chapters are written in a clear and concise manner with some good realistic examples. However some are a little too brief especially some of the new subjects areas such as XML Datawindows and OrcaScript. There is not enough detail and clear examples given for these new features.

Conclusion

If you haven't used PowerBuilder for a while or you are still using a version prior to Version 8 then you will find some useful information in this book, likewise if you are developing for multiple database platforms then the Database section will be very beneficial. I believe the book is more aimed at the intermediate level of knowledge rather than the advanced. Personally I wouldn't buy this book for myself because I wouldn't get enough new material from it that is not covered in the PowerBuilder User Guide.

Karen.baker@seabass.co.uk (www.seabass.co.uk)

This is one of the best books PowerBuilder client-server programming books that I have ever read and is probably one of the most well-received books for PowerBuilder yet. Every person I know, who own these books, experienced or not, find it a
very handy reference.

I recommend all the PowerBuilder developers to invest in this book. It's really cheap for the quality of it's contents.

Another bad book on Web Services. I bought this book as well as Professional XML Web Services, and both are terrible. If you are a developer, then this book doesn't even go into any detail about how Web Services work.
It gives you examples using GLUE which is useless and will fade into complete and utter obscurity. Of course, GLUE is completely incompatible with all the other real SOAP implementations, so if you get this book, you will need to go out and search for a better book, like I'm going to have to right now.

This book is a perfect introduction. It's that simple. Graham Glass, by the way, runs TME a company that is about to build a next-generation computing environment called GAIA which is a peer-to-peer system. Take a peek at themindelectric.com.

Graham is a master when it comes to OO technologies and Graham can convey these technologies clearly. This book covers may aspect of developing the next generation architecture and provides the framework in which to design them. An outstanding book for those who want the 'meat' behind these services. I've read ALL of the books around Web Services (including the .NET) and this is my 'reference' towards building these new technologies...

Graham Glass obviously has a talent for making complex material simple and easy to digest. This is evident in both the web services toolkit his company has released, called GLUE, and in this book, which provides a comprehensive, very hands-on, easy-to-read, look at web services.

This book covers a wide range of material, from the basics of what web services are and how they fit in the evolutionary path of distributed computing, to advanced topics such as WSDL and UDDI, Java to XML schema mapping, interoperability, and so on. Glass keeps the reader engaged in a hands-on way with a lot of example source code througout the book. The book utilizes the Java-based GLUE toolkit, which is provided on a bundled CD-ROM, to power most of the examples that illustrate the concepts. There is also a chapter on building and consuming web services with .NET and with Weblogic, a J2EE app server.

To bring it all together, there is a chapter that uses a B2B purchasing scenario to illustrate how J2EE(Weblogic), .NET, and GLUE can work together. This chapter is nice because it really gives the reader a sense of how web services really enable cross-platform interoperability, while sticking to a very pragmatic, real-world situation.

Finally, Glass provides an interesting, thought-provoking look at the P2P world and its intersection with the world of web services.

Glass' writing style is entertaining and his personal voice certainly comes through quite clearly. Overall, a very nice balance between educating the user on abstract concepts and keeping the reader busy with examples. Highly recommended.

GLUE, Graham's brainchild, is the number one web services
API for Java.

Many people can talk about web services, but only some
can create what is needed from the ground up.

Several other have tried, like Apache, or IBM, but they
don't even come close to his clarity of vision and the
ease of use that comes from this.

Heed his words.