News
Explaining Java and Web services
- By John K. Waters
- April 9, 2002
One of the biggest problems with Web services, said David Chappell and Tyler
Jewell, is explaining it -- that is, pulling all the pieces together into a
coherent and hype-free description of what Web services are and how developers
can create and deploy them. Longtime developers Chappell and Jewell are most
concerned with Java jocks, and their solution is a new book, Java Web Services
(O'Reilly).
"Dave and I recognized that the Java community had a strong need to understand
how Java applications exist in a Web services world," said Jewell. "Web
services are key for doing application integration, but what does that mean
for those applications that are built using Java? We tried to answer that question
in this book."
Chappell and Jewell provide readers with a concise introduction that includes
a detailed overview of Web services, XML-based interoperability technologies
and the Java technologies designed to interact with them. According to sources
at this year's JavaOne conference, where the book made its debut, the authors
assembled the manuscript in record time under pressure from the publisher to
make the show. But the book doesn't seem at all rushed, and at 254 pages, the
authors manage to meet their objectives.
Readers can find working examples of how each Java-based API can be used in
real-world, business-to-business communications environments. The authors explain
how Java developers can use SOAP to perform remote method calls and message
passing; how to use WSDL to describe the interface to a Web service or understand
the interface of someone else's service; and how to use UDDI to advertise, or
publish and look up services in each local or global registry.
The book also covers security and interoperability issues; integration with
other Java enterprise technologies, such as EJB and JMS; the work being done
on JAXM and JAX-RPC packages; and even interoperability with Microsoft's .NET
services.
"There is a great deal of hype and confusion out there about how Web services
technology can be used," said Chappell. "With myriad evolving standards
and technologies -- some real and some not yet baked -- we felt it was important
to do the investigative work to determine what's viable now and what needs to
mature. We believe our book provides some real-world clarity."
Both Jewell and Chappell are ink-stained veterans of technology book publishing.
Jewell is director of technical evangelism at BEA Systems, where he oversees
that company's efforts to encourage early adoption of strategic BEA technologies
by the ISV and developer community. A technologist with expertise in Web services,
large-scale system design and application infrastructures, he is the author
of Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans 2.0 (Wiley, 2001) and Professional
Java Server Programming J2EE 1.3 (Wrox, 2001).
Chappell (who is not related to ADT's columnist of the same name) is
vice president and chief technology evangelist at Sonic Software. He has been
building software tools and infrastructure for application developers for more
than 18 years, and oversaw the design and development of the first commercial
implementation of JMS in the marketplace. Chappell is co-author of Java Message
Service (O'Reilly) and Professional ebXML Foundations (Wrox).
The publishers are making Chapter 6, "UDDI: Universal Description, Discovery
and Integration" available free online at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/javawebserv/chapter/ch06.html.
About the Author
John K. Waters is a freelance writer based in Silicon Valley. He can be reached
at [email protected].