I purchased this book from Amazon mainly relying upon the reviews written by other people. As it turns out I can only assume that the other reviews were paid for either by the author or by the press.

The book is REALLY HARD TO READ, we are talking as dry as the sphinx's arm pit. The CD rom that comes with it contains the examples, however these are a mish-mash of VB6 and some .Net neither of which run easily. The .Net versions require updating in Visual Studio and can have some odd results. Some examples are even written with the server component in VB6 and the client in .Net - confusing to say the least.

If you want to learn how to practically implement a Web Service using VB then you should NOT look at this book. Most of the first 4 chapters are all about XML schemas and what they mean - with no "Real World" examples of how to create them in VB just the code of the schemas already created.

And another thing there is a large chunk of information about a "Real World" authentication and encryption implementation, however and I quote "I recommend that you use off-the shelf security implementations" - The author wouldn't even use this code! Microsoft has a Web services extension designed for authentication which the author doesn't mention anywhere.

Very disappointment to have spent good dollars on this book. I will be trying desperately to get my money back from Amazon.