If you'd like to learn how to create web services (in particular, using Apache Axis) and make some sense of various standards like SOAP, WSDL, JAX-RPC, SOAP with attachments, WS-Security, XML Encryption and XML Signature, then this book is for you. It has a tutorial style that walks you through in a step-by-step manner to create working code. The first 40 pages are freely available on http://agileskills2.org/DWSAA. You can judge it yourself.