Sebastopol, CA--Given Perl's natural fit for web applications development, it's no surprise that Perl is also a natural choice for web services development. Perl is the most popular web programming language, with strong implementations of both SOAP and XML-RPC, the leading methods used to distribute applications using web services. But most books on web services focus on writing these applications in Java or Visual Basic, leaving Perl programmers with few resources to get them started. Programming Web Services with Perl by Randy J. Ray and Pavel Kulchenko (O'Reilly, US $39.95) changes that, bringing Perl users all the information they need to create web services using their favorite language.
Coauthor Ray believes that XML-RPC and SOAP represent a significant step forward in the evolution of distributed systems programming, and hopes to encourage Perl programmers to begin to write these types of applications so they can see for themselves just how well they can be used to solve problems. "The role and validity of XML-based distributed programming is still subject to wider acceptance and implementation," Ray explains. "People and companies are still debating whether these solutions fit their needs. But I feel that web services are potentially a huge step in distributed programming, in that they take current technology, such as XML, and use it to build systems that are much more language-independent and platform-independent than ever before. As the Internet grows in popularity and its presence in people's day-to-day lives expands, the importance of services-as-content will grow."
"Programming Web Services with Perl" introduces the major web services standards, such as XML-RPC, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI, and shows how to implement Perl servers and clients using these standards. Readers will find detailed references on both the XML and SOAP toolkits, and learn when to use one technology in favor of the other. The book is rich with programming examples that will be useful well past the learning stage. And, beyond the basics, the book offers solutions to problems of security, authentication, and scalability.
Some of the topics covered in the book are:
- HTTP and XML basics
- XML-RPC and the toolkits
- SOAP and toolkits
- A comprehensive reference to SOAP::Lite
- Using SOAP with SMTP and other protocols
- Advertising and discovering with UDDI and WSDL
- Writing a REST-compliant web service
- A guide to the world of emerging web services standards
"Programming Web Services with Perl" was written for Perl programmers who have no prior knowledge of web services. Readers can pick up this book without any understanding of XML-RPC or SOAP and be able to apply these technologies easily, through the use of publicly available Perl modules detailed in the book.
Additional Resources:
An article by coauthor Randy J. Ray, Understanding Overloading in WSDL
More information about the book, including Table of Contents, index, author bios, and samples
Programming Web Services with Perl
Randy J. Ray and Pavel Kulchenko
ISBN 0-596-00206-8, 470 pages, $39.95 (US), $61.95 (CAN), 28.50 (UK)
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