This is a technical book that will be of interest to several audiences. Technologists in charge of developing system infrastructure for distributed applications will find guidance on what the constituent parts of the Web services architecture are, how they are manifest on the wire as messages, and their interrelationships. Distributed application developers interested in Web services will find a road map of the functionality that they can expect to use for interoperability in their advanced applications.
In this book, software architects and distributed system designers will find the definitions of the building blocks that comprise a foundation for distributed computing. They will be able to design their systems exploiting the mechanisms of the architecture and, hopefully, in harmony with the underlying design. Program managers and planners will find an overall picture of the Web services functionality that has been developed and the types of applications that it enables.
Last but not least, technology enthusiasts and pundits will find a broad picture of where the industry is going and some of the motivations behind why certain design decisions were made. We don't claim to provide the rationale for every design decision, but discussions of design tradeoffs and arguments supporting some design decisions are sprinkled throughout this book.