Expert Service-Oriented Architecture in C# 2005

If I could rate the first half of the book separately from the second half, I'd give the first half 1 star, because it's filled with junk and hype and stupid marketecture assertions about magical things that services do that ordinary components don't. Most of these assertions are simply false, the kind of "selling-it" nonsense that usually accompanies a bleeding-edge technology. Thing is, the edge isn't bleeding for Web Services or SOA any more, and we can see through the hype pretty clearly, but Hasan hasn't caught up. So the first half of the book is pretty useless, just as it was in the first edition. On the other hand, also just like the first edition, the second half is amazingly useful, dead-on practical, and totally hands-on. It's probably the most coherent summary of WSE 3.0 around, so the second half should get 5 stars. If you need to know how to get anything in WSE 3.0 up and running (and you should if your Web Services actually do anything significant), then the second half of this book is the first place you should look.