Web Services Platform Architecture by Donald F. Ferguson, Francisco Curbera, Frank Leymann, Tony Storey (2005, Paperback)

"Other books claim to present the complete Web services platform architecture, but this is the first one I've seen that really does. The authors have been intimately involved in the creation of the architecture. Who better to write this book?"

-Anne Thomas Manes, Vice President and Research Director, Burton Group

"This is a very important book, providing a lot of technical detail and background that very few (if any) other books will be able to provide. The list of authors includes some of the top experts in the various specifications covered, and they have done an excellent job explaining the background motivation for and pertinent details of each specification. The benefit of their perspectives and collective expertise alone make the book worth reading."

-Eric Newcomer, CTO, IONA Technologies

"Most Web services books barely cover the basics, but this book informs practitioners of the "real-world" Web services aspects that they need to know to build real applications. The authors are well-known technical leaders in the Web services community and they helped write the Web services specifications covered in this book. Anyone who wants to do serious Web services development should read this book."

-Steve Vinoski, Chief Engineer, Product Innovation, IONA Technologies

"There aren't many books that are as ambitious as this one is. The most notable distinguishing factor of this book is that the authors have tried to pair down the specifications for the user and rather than focusing on competing specifications, they focus on complementary ones. Nearly every chapter provides a business justification and need for each feature discussed in the Web services stack. I would recommend this book to developers, integrators, and architects."

-Daniel Edgar, Systems Architect, Portland General Electric

"Rarely does a project arrive with such a list of qualified and talented authors. The subject matter is timely and significant to the industry. "

-Eric Newcomer, author of Understanding SOA with Web Services and Understanding Web Services and Chief Technology officer, IONA

Using today's new Web services platform, you can build services that are secure, reliable, efficient at handling transactions, and well suited to your evolving service-oriented architecture. What's more, you can do all that without compromising the simplicity or interoperability that made Web services so attractive. Now, for the first time, the experts who helped define and architect this platform show you exactly how to make the most of it.

Unlike other books, Web Services Platform Architecture covers the entire platform. The authors illuminate every specification that's ready for practical use, covering messaging, metadata, security, discovery, quality of service, business-process modeling, and more. Drawing on realistic examples and case studies, they present a powerfully coherent view of how all these specifications fit together-and how to combine them to solve real-world problems.

• Service orientation: Clarifying the business and technical value propositions

• Web services messaging framework: Using SOAP and WS-Addressing to deliver Web services messages

• WSDL: Documenting messages and supporting diverse message interactions

• WS-Policy: Building services that specify their requirements and capabilities, and how to interface with them

• UDDI: Aggregating metadata and making it easily available

• WS-MetadataExchange: Bootstrapping efficient, customized communication between Web services

• WS-Reliable Messaging: Ensuring message delivery across unreliable networks

• ...