Is this book just talking about the concepts behind the integration services? Does the book mention about using any server implementation to try the samples?
I mean if I just keep on reading without attempting to apply the knowledge gained using the samples provided, the interest in reading is lost long before reaching the end of the book.
This book talks about concepts as well as practical samples. In fact, you will find only few concepts for which there is not a sample available. For most of the scenarios, the book provides samples which you can run using Open Source Apache ServiceMix JBI container (like a server), and all samples can be run using Apache Ant tool. You don't require any IDE/Workshop, but require Tomcat and Axis along with ServiceMix for running the samples.
What versions of specifications does the book use? Between the period you started to write this book and published it, if newer versions came out, we might end up missign the latest updates. It happened to me in the past once. thanks again.