New Book Review: "Java Web Services"
Recently posted book review for Java Web Services: Up and Running, by Martin Kalin, O'Reilly Media, 2009, reposted here:
As an alumnus of the university at which the well-known Richard Johnsonbaugh / Martin Kalin duo teach as professors, this reviewer is aware of the fact that these gentlemen typically receive positive feedback by their students (they teach at the undergraduate level and so this reviewer cannot attest to this feedback). However, teaching is different than writing, and this reviewer has generally not had positive experiences with their writings (see for example the first review by this reviewer, on "Schaum's Outline of Discrete Mathematics", in which this reviewer recommended that book as an alternative to Richard Johnsonbaugh's "Discrete Mathematics: Fourth Edition").
The book at hand, "Java Web Services: Up and Running", is a break from this stereotype because it is a great introduction to Java web services from various angles. While Kalin provides enough theory to propel the reader into good understanding of the programming material, this book is essentially a programming text, and because the bulk of the content consists of working programming examples, the risk that the complaints often heard by readers about lack of practical code might arise should be alleviated.
Another strength of this book is the use of many of the latest implementations of Java libraries in this space, although with any technical text of this genre the field is moving quickly and so it is at risk of becoming obsolete from an implementation perspective in the near future (although just partially, because many libraries are backward-compatible, at least to some extent). For example, the cover of this text states that it includes material on JAX-WS 2.1, but the reference implementation of the technology, Glassfish Metro, is already planning a May 2009 release of JAX-WS 2.2, just a few months after book publication.
Another strength of this book is its coverage of web services security in easy to understand language, including transport level security, message level security, and the WS-Security specification, with working examples throughout the chapters dedicated to these topics. While XML configuration files do come into play to some respect within the discussions, the focus is on programmatic use of associated libraries. This provides the benefit to those new to these technologies of understanding what is happening under the covers that are offered by technologies now being offered by various IDEs.
While Kalin does mention that there are tradeoffs to be made in using these libraries programmatically, however, it is very curious that the Spring Framework is not mentioned (see my review for "Spring in Action" by Craig Walls, for example). Kalin discusses the fact that message level security is more tedious than transport level security, and seems to prefer HTTPS to avoid this additional complexity, but since only programmatic, reference implementations are discussed the benefits of using Spring are completely missed. And as someone experienced with Apache Axis, Apache Axis2, Apache CXF, and Glassfish Metro, the beneficial abstraction that Spring provides is something this reviewer thinks that those new to Java web services should not ignore after they understand the material presented in this text.
But for what this text claims to be, a "thorough introduction to Java's APIs for both XML Web Services (JAX-WS) and RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS)" that "takes a clear pragmatic approach to these technologies by providing a mix of architectural overview, complete working code examples, and short yet precise instructions for compiling, deploying, and executing an application", this book hits the bull's-eye.