Given Perl's natural fit for web applications development, it's no
surprise that Perl is also a natural choice for web services
development. It's the most popular web programming language, with strong
implementations of both SOAP and XML-RPC, the leading ways to distribute
applications using web services. But 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 changes that, bringing Perl users all the
information they need to create web services using their favorite
language.Programming Web Services with Perl steers clear of the hype
surrounding web services and concentrates on what is useful and
practical. The book 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. You'll 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
you'll find useful well past the learning stage. And, moving 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
- SOAP:: Lite
- Using SOAP with SMTP and other protocols
- Advertising and discovering with UDDI and WSDL
- The REST methodology
- The future of web services
Programming Web Services with Perl was written for Perl programmers
who have no prior knowledge of web services. You 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.If you're interested in applying XML-RPC and SOAP
technologies to distributed programming applications, then Programming
Web Services with Perl is a book you'll want to have.
