I need some good references for SOA and Web Services… mainly dealing with architecture level issues.
The references are really meant to get me up to speed with the standards, specs and best practices around deployment of web services.
I’ve already browsed the Web for resources but am wondering if anyone can recommend something that they’ve used personally.
Thank you for all the help in advance.
Re: SOA & Web Services Reference Material
anyone?!? :(
Re: SOA & Web Services Reference Material
what s SOA
Re: SOA & Web Services Reference Material
Salaams,
I’ve been reading through Thomas Erl’s book “Service Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology and Design”
The ToC can be viewed here:
I must warn you, though…it really is a dry read…
It contains a pretty good survey of the WS-*, and related, standards that are used as the lingua franca of SOA.
The book also attempts to outline a particular architectural style for SOA, based on the complexity of message passing strategies it uses. It also attempts to identify qualitative characterisitics of SOA architectures. That is to say, the book is not vendor marketing hype, but an honest attempt to define what a SOA is, and is-not. 
Erl also has another book that is more management-centric. I haven’t read it.
Now, the Erl book tends to go no deeper than design. At OOPSLA, I attended an interesting talk by Nicolai Josuttis. He was lecturing on “real world” experiences with SOAs, and attempted to identify some best practices. He also has a book:
I have yet to read it, but if the talk is any indication it should be an interesting reference.
One of the interesting parts of the talk was where he questioned the fundamental SOA value proposition of re-use. He claims reusability with SOA is a farce…interfaces to the underlying service functionality almost always need to be customized (for business or performance reasons) to suit a particular usage scenario. Naturally, each custom interface almost always needs a custom implementation…
The true benefit, he argued, was the loose coupling of the underlying software artifacts. So, in practice, all benefits of SOA are traceable to this loose coupling…anyhow…that’s another story, I suppose…
Re: SOA & Web Services Reference Material
^ thanks picoico…
I actually have both of Erl’s books on SOA… like you said, I found the Concepts, Technology and Design one extremely dreary and couldn’t read it beyond a couple of chapters.
His other book: Service-Oriented Architecture: A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services is a little better…
at least the chapters have some meaty real-world scenario illustrations to go along with the theory.
That being said, I was hoping to go beyond textbooks and try out some toolkits and implementation frameworks to get a more hands-on overview of WS standards and issues.
I have downloaded a bunch of trade magazine pubs as well as academic/scholarly articles on issues surrounding WS and SOA. It’s slowly forming into a good library. I also find the articles to be more focused on specific issues and hence a little easier to read.
Re: SOA & Web Services Reference Material
^
As for implementations of platforms that could be used to (partially) implement SOA's, I'm only familiar with the open source ones. ServiceMix and FUSE (backed by IONA) seem interesting...I have only played with them though.
At work, we've deemed SOA overkill for our integration needs...we're more of a REST shop...and surprisingly, it's working quite well... :-)
Re: SOA & Web Services Reference Material
This link has some good content;
http://www.microsoft.com/soa/
Also, there’s lots of good stuff on MSDN.
Please do remember that most of the SOA projects fail not becasue of technology decision but becasue of political reasons. In order to implement SOA enteprise specially in mid/large firms there needs to be a culture change.
Regards,
Re: SOA & Web Services Reference Material
^ thanks for the links Boston...
I'm really interested in exploring the change management and governance aspect of SOA projects. It seems like SOA practice today is where ERP was almost 10 years ago... in terms of the mistakes ppl and organizations make when they embark on these projects.
Re: SOA & Web Services Reference Material
Governance is a huge topic and depending on the scenario it will differ quite a bit. Are you thinking about Governance at enterprise scale? ex. SOA governance for ERP related systems at a fortune 500 headquaters. Are you focusing on SMB space or maybe even at an application level?
Re: SOA & Web Services Reference Material
^ mostly organizational/enterprise level with secondary focus on B2Bi (I'm not finding much on project management in this area though - it's mainly all process management oriented).
Re: SOA & Web Services Reference Material
SOA governance is always process oriented but to build/maintain the tools/software/etc. you still use your typical software project/SDLC methologies. I can send you a deck and some documents on governance if you are interested. Just PM me an email address that is capable of recieving large docs.
BTW, In the 8 part series on SOA “SOA Workshop for Architects” that was released recently http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/solutions/soa/webcasts.mspx, there is a good session on Governance and Management presented by Jeff Johnson that ties together our ALM tools, WCF tools regarding management/config and ISV(Amberpoint, etc) solutions. I know this perhaps doesn’t solve all the governance issue you face in large data centers, but it could be a start.
Re: SOA & Web Services Reference Material
^ thanks for the links Boston.
I've PMed you my email addy.