Seems like i am out of luck lately when it comes to books. I must say this book was not really my type. Sometimes it is not easy so describe why, but book is just tough to read.

The thing i did not like about the book was that examples drag for entire pages. I know its difficult to show some things in concise way but i think this book had the longest code examples i have ever seen : -)

Another thing i did not like was that some of the examples seem incomplete, like class or configuration missing, but maybe it was my misunderstanding.

Style and language is not that bad but also not really great. I mean its a very dry book. Tech details, examples, configs, few concept explanations.

Coding style is strange as well, method naming like handle_request(). I am not conventions freak but seems odd that Java book uses this type of naming. Then you end up with half of names in standard Java notation (library calls) and half in the authors style.

I am also not sure why did author decide to write web service hosting application with http server written and multi threading support by hand. i mean i guess it may be an interesting excercise but would anyone do it that way? not sure.

Reading the book gave me impression that SOAP support in Java is really poor. Tools you have to use and apis you end up with are really messy and unpleasant to use. You have many different ways to do the same thing and none of the ways available is the really only one best. In addition SOAP itself suffers from way too many specifications and ways of doing things across platforms.

Book also shows that WS Security is a bunch of over-engineered nonsense for cunsultants to cash in on. Using it seems way to complex to be really adopted across different platforms and languages in the same way.

All in all, Java Web Services is not a really horrible book its just not what i was expecting. I hoped for proper explanation of key concepts. Even that I have worked with web services before i wished to see good examples and better ways of doing things. I also wanted to see best practices how do you do things right, i mean one really good way not dozen poor ones.

I liked the fact that it had some https examples and a bit of explanation there. I also liked the fact that its so thin. Actually I think I would not read it all way through if it was 500 pages : -)

If you plan on working a lot with web services in Java, i guess you can read Java Web Services. Even better if its going to be one of many web service books you read to have better comparison. By itself its just so so.

Final score: 5/10