But it's the book's subtitle, Solutions and Applications for the Real World, that poses a problem. The solutions and applications that Clabby serves up as proof-of-concept are garnished with so many caveats that it's hard to swallow the Web services hype. Virtually every example of Web services in action is followed by a paragraph warning "Not So Fast…" that plumbs the distance between theory and reality. A better subtitle would be Solutions and Applications for a Perfect World.

That Clabby is aware of this disconnect between the promise of Web services—when data will flow freely, comprehensibly, and profitably across corporations and applications—and the Balkanized, downsized reality of business today, makes the book all the more frustrating. (Forget whether J2EE gets along with .Net; are your lawyers talking?) Clabby's guarded optimism about the technology echoes the appealing conceit of Field of Dreams: If you build it, they will come. But given the cooperative requisites of Web services, it would be more accurate to say if we all build it, they will come—now you take the risk and go first.

To be sure, Clabby deserves a medal for his efforts—he clearly knows his SOAP from his Java and technically inclined readers concerned with Web services will find his research rewarding. Whether he gets a Medal of Freedom for prescient scholarship or a Purple Heart for shooting himself in his own arguments won't be apparent until the Web services bet has paid off—or been laid to rest.