Printer-friendly version

This is a review of "Apache CXF Web Service Development" book by Naveen Balani and Rajeev Hathi (Packt Pub, 2009)

Introduction

So here I am, a web services and CXF newbie. :) Oh yes, I have coded one or two web services (maybe even with Apache CXF), but I used copy&paste technique, without understanding what I am really doing. And I really wanted to know more.
I consider my lack of WS knowledge a serious gap in my CV so to say, because the IT world nowadays seems to be crazy about SOAP and REST. One more reason to learn it. So, I was quite enthusiastic before I started to read ...alas, soon my mood changed to disappointment. :(

The Shortest Review Ever

Although the book describes a wide range of Apache CXF features, it is poorly written, poorly edited and could have been much shorter without any loss.

You Will Not Enjoy It

During the lecture of the first part of the book I realized, that I have to struggle to get through each paragraph. This was the first time since ages that I had such problems with understanding (not to mention enjoying) of a technical text. It is not the problem of the complicated concepts (cause they are not so complicated) but rather matter of the bad style full of unclear or meaningless sentences.

The book is packed with smaller and bigger annoying errors, omissions, unnecessary repeated parts, bad editing, lack of clarity, lack of consequence in writing of terms, typos, unclear sentences etc. etc. (I have few examples for each of these if you are interested).
I have read many IT books, but this one is definitely the worst one in this aspect. It looks like no one read it before it was printed.

Ok, I Admit You Can Learn A Lot Here About CXF

The book starts with explanation of WS related concepts and terms. I hoped for nice clarification of these subjects, but it is not explained in a reader-friendly manner. A rookie can easily get lost in plethora of names (JAXB, WSDL, CXF, SOAP) and fail to understand which technology does what in process of sending/receiving/(de)serializing of objects etc. A diagram or two could be very helpful but there is none.

Things get slightly better when it comes to description of Apache CXF. The book contains a lot of useful information about it. It tells you how to implement SOAP or REST-style web service with Apache CXF, how to deploy them etc. Each concept is illustrated by an example (source code is distributed with the book). In fact, I suspect that it covers every typical thing you would like to do with Apache CXF. Alas, all this value is lost in the sea of problems that I mentioned previously.

Conclusion

You can probably treat the shabby style and errors as an extra challenge to your brain and then it is possible that you will enjoy the book. In my opinion the book is hard to read, and Apache CXF deserves a better one.

P.S. I was so disappointed with the style of the book and the plethora of errors that I found there, that I wrote a long email to the publisher (Pack Publishing) giving my opinion on this matter supported by numerous examples. Hopefully next time they will have someone read the book before they publish it !

Links

• official site of the book