I met Paul Reinheimer yesterday at the php|works / db|works conference in Toronto, where he did two presentations on web services: one on REST-based web services and one on SOAP-based ones. I like Paul's presentation style: it's casual, friendly and adaptive to the audience (the audience at the REST presentation were led in a simple REST API coding exericise, while the SOAP crowd, possibly experiencing some mid-afternoon tiredness, opted not to).

In both presentations, Paul covered the technical specifics of using REST- and SOAP-based Web APIs using examples that were simple enough to grasp during a presentation but meaty enough to be more than mere "toy" examples. Paul also covered issues that applied to web APIs of all types, including why your company should offer a Web API, security issues to consider, things to think about when exposing an API to outside developers and the importance of building a developer community around your API.

Paul knows of what he speaks. He spent a year researching and writing programs for his new book, which goes under the lengthy title Professional Web APIs with PHP: eBay, Google, Paypal, Amazon, FedEx plus Web Feeds. I've only had a chance to skim it so far, but I like what I've seen: just enough background material to guarantee comprehension of the underlying principles and not be "filler", and plenty of juicy code examples to try out. Where many books have left me screaming "Enough preamble, Talky McYammer! Get to the code!", Paul's book lets you dive right in. Kudos, Paul!

I'm almost ready to start giving Tucows' API documentation a much needed overhaul. I think it would be a good idea to steal a few tricks from Paul's book.

(I'll post a review of Paul's book in the coming weeks. I'm still writing up some reviews for a few Apress Ajax books!)