The title of this book promises a lot. To make it short, it holds what it promises. At almost every page you notice that the authors have working (or Real-World) experience. The tips and FAQs included in the book speak for themselves.
The partioning of the book is reasonable and chapters are called Perspectives. Eclipse and WebSphere Developers should be already familiar with that. The book is written in a funny style and never boring. The mostly subjective footnotes are always worth reading and sometimes you catch yourself nodding (and smiling, and remembering...) when reading them.
Another good thing is the PremierQuotes company example. This company (with Zippy Coder as lead developer and Mr Ed U. Cate as freelance technology instructor) wants to realise a Web service project and the doubts of the developers and managers are mentioned, explained and solved. The example draws through the whole book, starting from the planning phase until you have a full working Web service project at the end. Great!
As at the time of writing SOAP/WSDL 1.1 were the current versions and the WS-I Basic Profile not yet finished, the book is based on them. At some points you get a tip for the SOAP/WSDL 1.2 drafts (at that time, now recommendations), but not too much in the Development Perspective as the authors were interested in Real-World (and therefore stable) standards. Therefore, the outlook for new versions of standards are discussed in the Future Perspective which is also reasonable. I have to commit, I got a fan of the Perspective style used in the book.
Although the book is completely based on the Java language and IBM tools/IDEs you get a ten page appendix about .NET/C# Web service clients. This could have been a little more but you have to remember you already have to carry 650 pages with you.
I hope we get more to read from those authors. Five stars for a great book about the Web services world.
