Microsoft .NET XML Web Services Step by Step

Programming C#

Xml

Programming .NET Web Services

Format: Paperback
Author: Alex Ferrara
ReleaseDate: 15 October, 2002
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Rating:

Programming .NET Web Services
It's very useful for a web developer. I like this book.

one of the best titles for web services developers
Whether it involves calling a set of services asynchronously (and somehow keeping the client(s) updated of its progress) - or whether it is monitoring, profiling and logging your web-services - this text contains well explained examples of doing a lot of useful stuff. This text addresses just about every challenge a web-services developer may face.
It has saved me a lot of time - and I found it well worth the price.

Understand web services in a .NET environment
Hey, the affair isn't limited to Microsoft based development firms. Web Services are a catchphrase that many Microsoft-centric developers are falling in love with and they don't know why. Web Services are hot topics right now. They provide the best way yet to utilize the Internet for remote work.

For the uninitiated (and aren't we all at one time or another), web services are programs that rely on SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) to expose their interfaces across the Internet. This means you can write a program and, if you make it a web service, you will expose its public interfaces for anyone to use via the Internet.

This book takes a normal O'Reilly tack of presenting in-depth information that is appropriate for users who want to know the wherefores behind the decisions. The authors present the Microsoft/Visual Studio methodology where many of the tedious tasks of Web Service development are performed for the user. They also do a solid job of presenting why that work must be done by someone and how to do it if you don't want to use Visual Studio . NET (VS. NET). The book gives good information (about 30 pages) covering Web Service Description Language (WSDL) before it covers the incredible facility VS. NET provides for generating these documents. WSDL docs are necessary for every web service you build if you expect anyone to use your program. The authors explain and lead the reader through the process of writing a web service and consuming a web service. They also expend effort on discussing stateful versus non-stateful web services and how to appropriately choose the best methodology for your application. With the performance gains that can be attained in IIS 6 via caching, the assertion the authors make about considering caching during design phase rather than after development is in testing or production struck a chord. The book covers IIS 6's caching choices as well as explaining the benefits and drawbacks of both. I didn't finish the debugging and security sections but plan to get back into the book and finish them as they look valuable.

In conclusion, if you want to mine a book for a robust understanding of web services and the constituent pieces of that technology (with all your examples in C#) then this book is for you. If you're looking to get a 5 minute read and start throwing code (and probably exceptions), pick up a less thorough book. You'll actually read this one instead of just looking for examples to copy. The information this book imparts should be standard knowledge for anyone that expects to write production quality web services.