I was pleased to find a copy of Programming Web Services with Perl by Randy J. Ray and Pavel Kulchenko in my mailbox Friday evening. (Thanks Paul!) I've given a quick scan and its quite well done and quite thorough. I'll be posting more details comments in a later post.
One quick highlight and the first chapter I went directly to and read was Chapter 11 which covers REST. (This may be a first!) My first imprlession is that its well done and covers all of the basics from theory to analysis to a basic implementation scenario. It does a good job of taking the scientific definition of REST and putting it into practical terms. It covers all of the basic methods and their usage and even discusses aesthetics of URI design. It's criticisms of REST are fair though a bit tough. I would have liked to have seen a bit of discussion on comparing SOAP and REST (the book explictly avoids it) particularly in discussing the advantages of document-centric approach to Web services that REST promotes. It would have balanced the chapters criticisms of REST and make it more neutral.
Just some initial thoughts as a highlight to my commentary to follow.
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