SOA, a 30,000' view
Service-oriented architecture is more than just another IT buzzword. Most companies, large and small have heard of SOA and have either jumped on the bandwagon or have plans to do so in the near future.
SOA in Practice covers a lot of ground and provides definitions and descriptions of the complex world of SOA. Initially, the book describes the motivation to adapt a service-oriented architecture. It then proceeds into a discussion of the elements of SOA and reiterates that SOA is no silver bullet.
The author makes it clear that SOA is an ideal solution for a specific set of circumstances: "heterogeneous distributed systems with different owners." If that simple definition doesn't fit your organization, SOA may not be for you.
If you are still committed to learning about or implementing SOA after understanding what it is and what it can (and can't) do for your organization, read on! The remainder of the book present an in-depth look at all elements of service-oriented architecture.
I particularly enjoyed the chapters covering the enterprise service bus and message exchange patterns. In a nutshell, they show some of the many possibilities of how SOA can be implemented - indicating that there is no 'one right way' to do it.
Web Services (not a requirement of SOA) is discussed, as well as the management of services, model-driven service development, and advice on establishing SOA in your enterprise.
The book is light on technical details. This is obviously intentional as its core focus is not the nitty-gritty of how to make it work. It is more of a high-level, conceptual view of what SOA is all about and how it can help your enterprise solve difficult challenges when faced with integration of heterogeneous systems.
Excellent Writer, But Average Content
The book starts very well and you become very excited about what the future chapters will hold. I must say that the writer is an excellent writer and knows how to captivate you, but that only lasts as long as what he's talking about entertains. The chapters that a few here seemed to have liked were the best parts of the book, but even they were average at best. I was a little dissapointed that he gave examples of complex objects being returned from service calls, but never addressed methods that used XML instead of complex objects and in turn majority of the versioning section was based on versioning and problems that occur when dealing with complex objects. I did like the opinions he gave on using web services as means of realizing SOA. For those who didn't read the book, he doesn't think much of web services because of the many different standards organizations and the many versions of standards that are used to implement web services - these issues create interoperability problems when you're ultimately looking for high interoperability with SOA.
Overall, this book maybe of interest to a business person or IT manager trying to understand what SOA is, but it's not that great for technologists looking for implementations that may fit their system. Three Stars!!!
A MUST HAVE SOA BOOK
After more than a decade of being the focus of the industry's attention, SOA is still widely misunderstood at all levels, business and technical, and is still being successfully sold as a snake oil. This is why the publication of this book is extremely important.
Being a rare objective survey of the entire SOA landscape, the book touches on numerous dimensions of SOA and services: service classification, lifecycle, management, performance, security, and governance. In the still over-hyped SOA landscape, the author stands out with his reasoning and pragmatism, which he showed in his earlier books (e.g. his excellent book "The C++ Standard Library").
On about 300 pages the author manages not just to cover numerous important topics at a reasonable depth, but to pause at important points and suggest a helpful practical advice from his own experience. The book reads well, the language is simple and straightforward. This book has a lot of thought and value per ounce, which is very unusual for a SOA book.
Whether you are new to SOA or have been sick from reading mountains of nonsense about it for years, you MUST have this book on your bookshelf, next to "Enterprise SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices" by Dirk Krafzig, Karl Banke, and Dirk Slama, and "Service Orient or Be Doomed" by ZapThink founders Jason Bloomberg and Ronald Schmelzer.
A hitchhiker's guide to SOA
I found the book to be well written and the content draws on Mrs. Josuttis daily experience as a system architect.
As a developer, I found value in the second half of the book (chapters 10-20) as the discussion revolves around specific aspects of running SOA, in particular Message Exchange Patterns (ch. 10) , Versioning (ch. 12) and Model-Driven Service Development (ch. 18).
I have to agree with one of the quotes on the back-cover, "The book belongs in the hands of every CIO, IT Director and IT planning manager." --Dr. Richard Mark Soley, Chairman and CEO, Object Management Group; Executive Director, SOA Consortium
The optimal audience for this book is most likely IT Management and not the rank-and-file developers of the SOA world.
Excellent real life SOA book
The book is very well written and covers the topic SOA in a very structured and clear way. The author approaches the topics from a real life perspective based on actual experiences. It provides exactly what the title promises.
(11 reviews)
