Google, Amazon and Beyond - Creating and Consuming Web Services

What Is This Book About? This is a book about Web Services. Web Services are still more like a movement than a mature technology. The movement is motivated by a vision of a semi-auto mated Web that can support long chains of interactions between autonomous agents. There are three important components to that vision. One is interoperabil ity: a service can have clients (agents) from any platform, in any language. Another is autonomy: an agent can discover the services it needs from their published descriptions that include both what the service can do and how it does it (the interfaces of available actions). The third is (semi) automatic code creation: one description can be used by a development framework to automate the creation of code for clients and by the services themselves. As of today, interoperability is close to full realization, with only occasional glitches; autonomy is a distant vision; but it still has problems. Interoperability has been achieved code creation is useful in part by using an XML-based high-level protocol (SOAP) for message exchanges between clients and services. As long as the client can produce messages in the right format, it doesn't matter what language they're written in or on what platform they run. The first three chapters of our book show how to write platform-independent Web Services clients in Javascript and Java running from within a browser (IE6 or Mozilla).

List of contents

1 Defining Web Services.- 2 The Plumbing: DOM and SOAP.- 3 More Services: Java Applet.- 4 DBService and a Book Club.- 5 Authentication and REST.- 6 Restructuring Results with XSLT.- 7 Tomcat, JSP, and WebDAV.- 8 WebDAV Client to Database via XML.- 9 WSDL and Axis.- Appendix A Installation.- Appendix B Troubleshooting.- Appendix C Online Resources.- Standards.- W3C Technical Reports.- OASIS Technical Committees.- Other Consortia.- Sources of Information.- XML Resources.- Java XML Processing and Web Services.- Web Services.- Keep Looking.

About the author

Alexander Nakhimovsky received a master's degree in mathematics from Leningrad University in St. Petersburg�and a Ph.D. in linguistics from Cornell University, with a graduate minor in computer science. He has been teaching computer science at Colgate University since 1985. He is the author (jointly with Tom Myers) of several books and book chapters, including JavaScript Objects, Professional Java XML Programming, and Professional Java Server Programming, J2EE Edition, as well as books and articles on linguistics and artificial intelligence.

Summary

What Is This Book About? This is a book about Web Services. Web Services are still more like a movement than a mature technology. The movement is motivated by a vision of a semi-auto­ mated Web that can support long chains of interactions between autonomous agents. There are three important components to that vision. One is interoperabil­ ity: a service can have clients (agents) from any platform, in any language. Another is autonomy: an agent can discover the services it needs from their published descriptions that include both what the service can do and how it does it (the interfaces of available actions). The third is (semi) automatic code creation: one description can be used by a development framework to automate the creation of code for clients and by the services themselves. As of today, interoperability is close to full realization, with only occasional glitches; autonomy is a distant vision; but it still has problems. Interoperability has been achieved code creation is useful in part by using an XML-based high-level protocol (SOAP) for message exchanges between clients and services. As long as the client can produce messages in the right format, it doesn't matter what language they're written in or on what platform they run. The first three chapters of our book show how to write platform-independent Web Services clients in Javascript and Java running from within a browser (IE6 or Mozilla).

Additional text

From the reviews:

"In contrast to a great many other books on web services, this book is structured firmly around what is out there and what works. … A number of extended examples are used in the book … . This extended example brings together many of the topics that are covered separately. … the book also provides much useful additional, but essential, material. … Overall then, this is a useful book … . the reader can very quickly get up to speed and start experimenting." (TechBook – Report – online, March, 2004)

Report

From the reviews:

"In contrast to a great many other books on web services, this book is structured firmly around what is out there and what works. ... A number of extended examples are used in the book ... . This extended example brings together many of the topics that are covered separately. ... the book also provides much useful additional, but essential, material. ... Overall then, this is a useful book ... . the reader can very quickly get up to speed and start experimenting." (TechBook - Report - online, March, 2004)

Product details

• Authors: Tom Myers, Alexander Nahkimovsky, Alexande Nakhimovsky, Alexander Nakhimovsky
• Publisher: Apress
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2003
• EAN: 9781590591314
• ISBN: 978-1-59059-131-4
• No. of pages: 352
• Weight: 668 g
• Illustrations: XXI, 352 p. 54 illus.
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > IT, data processing > Data communication, networks; B, Software Engineering, Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems, Web Development, Computer programming, Operating systems, Professional and Applied Computing