Book Review - Applied SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture and Design Strategies
Reviewed by Tom Dwyer, Editorial Board Member, SOAInstitute.org
There is no shortage of books that cover SOA topics, but few of them go beyond background information, telling us what a service is and what technologies we can use to network them, but leaving us on our own to figure out how to identify or design a service. Fewer still go into the design of SOA solutions for the enterprise. I’m happy to report that this book is a welcome exception.
You're probably familiar with several of the authors already. Lead author Mike Rosen is Editorial Director for SOAInstitute.org, and co-authors Boris Lublinksy and Kevin T. Smith have written articles and spoken at SOAInstitute.org events. For this book, they are also joined by Marc J. Balcer.
The book is organized in three parts. Part I – Understanding SOA gives an overview of service-orientation. Chapter 1 - Realizing the Promise of SOA describes the potential that SOA has to improve agility, flexibility, costs and time to market. It also describes the challenges that must be overcome to realize these benefits. Chapter 2 – SOA Architecture and Fundamentals describes the architecture of SOA from an enterprise perspective, tying SOA into six key enterprise areas: Business Strategy, Information and Semantics, Business Processes, Service Standards, Technology Infrastructure, and Operations. We think you'll find this perspective of SOA quit different than what you typically see. Chapter 3 - Getting Started with SOA provides a practical approach to introducing SOA into an organization and gives an overview of the design methodology that is detailed throughout the rest of the book.
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