Explains all you need to know about the Web Services Platform

What do you get when you put a number of Web Services gurus from IBM in a room for a while? You'll get the "Web Services Platform Architecture" book. In short, all the authors that assisted in writing this book are Web services experts from IBM who have either wrote the specs or assisted in writing the Web services specs in question. The nice thing about the book is that is it an easy read. It is not a dry, boring, "reading-these-specs is-putting-my-to-sleep," book. As you know, there are a number of specs that cover Web services, so the authors have a taken a short-and-sweet approach to each protocol. Each protocol is covered in detail, but the detail surrounds why you would want to care about this protocol, and not what paragraph 4, subparagraph 8 of chapter 2 of WS-Security says about naming conventions, for example. Each chapter ties the business needs to the technical aspects of the protocol, and talks about how the protocol can be used to solve a given business problem.

The following protocols are covered in this text:
Messaging-type protocols such as WS-Addressing
Description-type protocols such as WS-Policy, and WSDL
Protocols that are used for QoS specification such as WS-Security, WS-Reliable Messaging, WS-Atomic Transaction and WS-Business Activity
Security type protocols (WS-Security) and other related protocols such as WS-Trust, WS-Privacy, WS-Federation and WS-Authorization
Workflow and composition type protocols such as WS-BPEL.

As the authors move "up" the stack (the protocols are presented and classified very similar to what I described above - layers atop of the transport protocols such as TCP/HTTP), the business examples get more and more involved and complicated. You need to realize that there is not much code writing actually occurs in this book, but a high-level architectural methodology of how different pieces of the Wed services stack fit together, and compliment each other. The different examples given demonstrate another very crucial fact: an architect can pick and choose the protocol and standard s/he wants to get the job done. Web services protocols are by no means an all-or-nothing concept. This is why interoperability of various protocols very important, and the main reason why some of these protocols are stuck at the "final" stages of approval committee for such a long time.

Two case studies are presented at the end of the text that covers the end-to-end model of the protocols. Authors also discuss a number of competing protocols that have come out of various Web services standard committees, and why each one is needed. Future trends in Web services is the last topic discussed in the text with a brief talk of Web semantics.

All and all, this is a great book on Web service protocols - the topics are easy to read and follow - something that each and everyone one of us involved with Web services can use given the number of protocols and standards that are out there.

Other Reviews

• Great Theortical Reference to the WS-* Stack
• 
  Very good conceptual and technical introduction to the Web Services like SOA components
• Not a bad book - Good fundamentals less on development focus
• Explains all you need to know about the Web Services Platform
• Too high level