SOAP: Cross Platform Web Services Development Using XML

This is a really good book and I learned a lot from it. After reading some of the reviews, I noticed that people seem to run hot and cold on this book. Since I loved it, I thought I could put in this word of warning: make sure you have done some actual development before grabbing this book. Scott assumes that you understand how to write code and glosses over a lot of that stuff. He does assume you know nothing about XML or SOAP and does an excellent job bringing the reader up to speed.

I've read the other positive reviews on this topic and they already say quite a bit about the book-- explains SOAP well, good XML primer, yadda yadda yadda. I learned quite a bit from this book. The thing this guy does that many authors don't do is he explains all the basics (fairly common) and then shows how everythiing works across C#, VB 6, and Java on *nix and Windows. Most authors cop out and stick with only Linux or only Windows. None of the books I've seen build an example that crosses the bridge.Before buying this title, I highly recommend that you check out the At Your Service column on MSDN. Scott's a co-author on that column. If you like the writing style in his columns, you'll love the book. For more in depth writing, consider searching for his name and look for more articles. That's what I did.

Just a couple of quick comments:1. The brief history that explains why SOAP was invented was handy in understanding where the need for SOAP came from.2. Great job on explaining the only XML you need to know in order to understand SOAP. So far, the content has been dead on.3. The book has given me a good understanding of how all this stuff works. I grabbed this one because of Scott's interop article he did for MSDN. I figured that he had to learn the info somewhere-- this book must be the location. I hope he revs this one soon after SOAP v1.2 comes out. Hopefully, he'll also include info on the new WS-xxx specs that Microsoft is pumping out. If anyone can explain this stuff well, it's Scott!

My boss wanted me to show him that something complex could be done using XML Web Services. I took about a day and a half to setup the case study from this book (case study is an auction web site that has a Linux box talking to Windows servers running both the SOAP toolkit and VS .NET Beta 2). He and his boss were amazed that something like that could be put together using XML. As an added bonus, the explanations of SOAP, WSDL, and the rest made it easy for me to explain what was going on under the covers. Scott has some great stuff on MSDN as well. To get a feeling for his writing style, just look for his name there.

I bought this book hoping to figure out what all of this Web Service stuff is about. Scott writes for MSDN, so I figured that he must have a clue. As a prior reviewer noted, Scott goes into detail about the specifications. I read the SOAP spec and it is fairly difficult to read. Yes, he follows the specs fairly closely but he explains things in easy to understand terms and does a far better job explaining things than the SOAP or WSDL specs do. I've been working on a web service for the past month now. Not surprisingly, I've had to dig into SOAP messages and WSDL whenever I was doing my interoperability testing. Thanks to Scott's book, I can actually understand what I'm reading.The case study is a good read as well. Make sure to read it if only for the architectural guidance. Almost everybody on my team bought a copy. Do yourself a favor. If you are starting a project that exposes or consumes a Web Service, include copies of this book for all devs in the budget. It'll be worthwhile.