Web Services References

Featuring: Some "good" References
Credit: Imagenation

Web Services are moving so fast its is hard to keep up with all the developments. Key security and encryption standards are just now nearing or completing approval. As well new versions of SOAP and WSDL are coming out. So its turbulent times in the Web Services arena. Time for some good, thorough Essentials.

Ethan Cerami's book Web Services Essentials is exactly that - but not just an overview and introduction to the concepts of Web Services and some of the key standards; but also a very inexpensive (read open source) based programming introduction -where users get to develop real, working Web Services.

Cerami starts with an overview of why XML fits well into the world of distributed messaging and calls- XML's extensible tags are almost perfect for the task. Then XML-RPC is defined and its relation to SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol) is defined for use in a sample exercise using Apache SOAP. The exercise is simple message passing but it does invoke a Web Service on the NET. The next phase involves learning WSDL-Web Services Desscription Language which describes a Web Service such that any user can go to a UDDI-Universal Description, Discovery and Integration is a registry or database of WSDL descriptors to find Web Services available and of interest. And Cerami shows how to setup this up such that all of the UDDI querying is done in automated fashion over the Web.

In short order, readers find they have read (and if so inclined, programmed)all the ingredients of basic Web Services. Its all in the title of the book - Web Services Essentials.