This is a useful book. In one project that I worked on I was a consumer of a web service and had to learn very quickly how to process a SOAP message. The chapter dealing with the SAAJ api was quite useful in this respect.
I've skimmed through other chapters on a 'need to' basis and found them instructive also. If there's one criticism I'd say it's short on solid complete working examples. Other than that, I'd recommend it to anyone trying to understand the Web Service labyrinth.

This book is not a book teaching you programming WS step by step. It is ideal for Enterprise and Soultion architecs, who need to familiarize with the technology stack under SOA and WS*. It is an encyclopedy, which covers these standards and technologies in a very intelligible way. It covers the concepts and principles, not coding details.

I got everything i need in this book. This is very helpful for the sun exam also....in one word, this is the bible of webservice.

Perfect book for a beginer. The book starts from basics to leads complex points in a balanced manner.

just started reading it.easy to read ,has a good flow,clear explanation.i think it will be a good resource for my current web services project and if i take the certification exam too.

Monson-Haefel has written the book to own if you are developing web services. Even though the book is a few years old, you still need to get this book. If you go around my company and my previous company, all J2EE developers have this one sitting on their desk.

Do a Google search and read Monson-Haefel's blog. You will get some insight on his thoughts during and after writing the book and you will find that he will not be doing a revision.

That's a complete shame but I don't blame him. It would be nice to get a new revision on all of the new stuff that has come along like annotations, JAX-WS, etc.

This book is very useful for developers/architects who are writing system software or application software dealing with web services.

If you are just going to write some web service client code to access some web service or planning to deploy simple web services, then this book will not be very useful.

There is good coverage of XML Schema, UDDI, JAXR and WS-I Basic Profile wherever relevant. The J2EE 1.4 model web services are explained in decent detail. Some extra examples would have been better. Of course the number of pages would have increased then.

To be an architect/developer/practitioner of web services related technologies, you need to have a sound knowledge of the theory behind the specifications. You can always look up online tutorials etc for sample code. This book will provide you the theory behind web services.

Anil Saldhana
Chicago Java Users Group

This is a very technical book, written by very technical people for other very technical people. It would never be considered light reading or adorn many coffee tables.

The authors handle the various and diffuse material reasonably well, given that they are very technical people &c, but at some point it begins to resemble a conclave of monks arguing about angels and needles, and the whole structure begins to resemble something by Rube Goldberg instead of a work well though out.

It is a reasonably thorough book on this very technical subject, some 800+ pages of heavy lifting. From the vantage point of a company making investments that utilize technology, what the book is about strongly goes against Ockham's Razor. But if the simpler approach cannot or will not be adopted for any reason then this is a useful reference book that most, perhaps all, of the implementation consultants should have in their libraries.

It's been enduring pain when I tested the code examples and it did'nt work on JBoss. The content looks a bit old and needs an update.

I'm very happy with this book because it has the level of details that I need. I recomend this book for professionals would who like to do the code with their own hands because they want to have total control over their code production.

The explainations are lenghty. Need better organization of contents!

J2EE Web Services by Richard Monson-Haefel ISBN: 0321146182: It is a very professional technical book that you can read serially (low page flipping factor). It is written in such a form that answers the questions as they come up as if the author had read your mind. No detail is left apart. It is one of those books that you read with passion longing for the next reading session.

Warning: this book is only a rumination on the J2EE web services specification, fat on "theory" and with absolutely no real code examples you can run and play with to learn. Unless you are someone who can learn playing tennis looking at people playing it, or become a musician by listening to music, I doubt you can become a web services developer by just reading words and code snippets.
As the author says: "this book doesn't attempt to cover installation, configuration, or deployment except in terms of standard J2EE requirements". I do believe that a decent tech book must have running code to support its explanations and support its value and usefulness. With this text Monson-Haefel is well on his way to win the "Most useless java book of the year" award.

Warning: this book is only a rumination on the J2EE web services specification, fat on "theory" and with absolutely no real code examples you can run and play with to learn. Unless you are someone who can learn playing tennis looking at people playing it, or become a musician by listening to music, I doubt you can become a web services developer by just reading words and code snippets.
As the author says: "this book doesn't attempt to cover installation, configuration, or deployment except in terms of standard J2EE requirements". I do believe that a decent tech book must have running code to support its explanations and support its value and usefulness. With this text Monson-Haefel is well on his way to win the "Most useless java book of the year" award.

Most of the other books about this subject are three or more years old. In other words, too old to be useful.

This book covers it all, from the details of mapping between Java and WSDL to the proper way to deploy web services, right down to the deployment descriptors.

It's a really well done book. I say this as somone who's currently writing web services and has been through many of the other books.

this really doesnt seem to help with real world implementation. I also found it boring just like some manual. When is HeadStart book on Webservices due!

I was a little bit afraid to buy this book because of many pages. I thought it could be like xdoclet ("computer generated")API book (:-)). NOT AT ALL. Before start of reading my knowledge of WS architecture had serious holes. Now after reading not only these holes are plumbed. I received complete new view of web services and I dare to prepare for certification exam now.
You get almost absolute grip of technologies like XML, XML Schema, SOAP, WSDL, JAX-RPC, JAXR, SAAJ, JAXP.
This is real Web Service bible. It is a MUST. Go ahead.

I bought 5 books on Web services. This is the one I use 99% of the time.

If you are a developer who wants to build working web services, buy this book. If you just want to know or talk about web services (i.e you are a manager), then buy other books that gives you an overview.

It is very unfortunate that this book will never get updated. The author (Monson-Haefel) decided not to write any more books.

Not all of this book may be of interest to every reader, but it covers so much ground that it makes for a comprehensive reference text. Nearly 1,000 pages with lots of samples and overall pretty well organized. Comparing it to other java books, the volume of information you get for what it's priced at is a bargain.

This book takes the reader from first principles, laying a foundation upon which the implications and potential of Web services can be fully understood. Early chapters introduce and explain Web services basics.

Throughout the book the author maintains a vendor neutral perspective. So if you want to read an introductory text on web-services at leisure, this book is a good choice. Its written in a very comprehensible style and I had no problems understanding the key concepts.

If you are seeking to learn the details of web services beyond introductory concepts then this isn't the book for you.

This book is not very promising for those want to build a real-world Web services architecture. This book repeats the tutorial of Sun's Java web services. The book completely forgot about how to make all components work together and lack content how to implement Web services from legacy J2EE components, Interoperability with .NET or other Web services solutions etc. I found the first 3 chapters and last 2 chapters does not make sense. Besides, the book is more typical and spends more content like the free Java tutorial download from Sun site. Where is the value ?

This book disappointed me as it failed to meet my expectations. If compare this book to the author's EJB book then you will be disappointed like me as well. This book explained the basics of Web services and its J2EE examples. Although the content and examples are well paced at the end all I found is this book lacks a real world architecture and implementation strategies. Like me, many reviewers told the same as this book does'nt cover much more than the J2EE 1.4 tutorial in aspects of Web services. I felt like I lost my grasp of Java examples at the end as the book did'nt finish how to put all the APIs together.

I find this book a great reference for the technologies central to developing Web Services on a J2EE platform. It focuses on the central technologies such as JAX-RPC and SAAJ. It does a great job in explaining how these work and how you can use them. You get answers to questions like how to handle SOAP attachments and SOAP headers in your applications, how MIME types are mapped to Java types etc.
This book gives you the details.