Product Description
XML, Web services, ESB, and BPEL in real-world SOA projects
- Service-Oriented Architectures and SOA approach to integration
- SOA architectural design and domain-specific models
- Common Integration Patterns and how they can be best solved using Web services, BPEL and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
- Concepts behind SOA standards, security, transactions, and how to efficiently work with XML
In Detail
Integration of applications within a business and between different businesses is becoming more and more important. The needs for up-to-date information that is accessible from almost everywhere and developing e-business solutions — particularly business to business — require that developers find solutions for integrating diverse, heterogeneous applications, developed in different architectures and programming languages and on different platforms. They have to do this quickly and cost effectively, but still preserve the architecture and deliver robust solutions that are maintainable over time.
Integration is a difficult task. This book focuses on the SOA approach to integration of existing (legacy) applications and newly developed solutions, using modern technologies, particularly web services, XML, ESB, and BPEL. The book shows how to define SOA for integration, what integration patterns to use, which technologies to use, and how to best integrate existing applications with modern e-business solutions. It also shows how to develop web services and BPEL processes, and how to process and manage XML documents from the JEE and .NET platforms. Finally, it also explains how to integrate both platforms using web services and ESBs.
What you will learn from this book?
- How to design and develop SOA for integration
- Integration architecture patterns, principles, and best practices, with focus on the process-centric SOA approach
- The role of XML, web services, and ESBs in SOA for integration
- The role of service composition and BPEL in integration
- J2EE and .NET integration
- Why and how to use web services and XML for integration
Approach
After explaining the challenges, levels, and strategies of integration the book explains SOA, web services, and the Enterprise Services Bus before covering processing XML and web services on the .Net and JEE platforms in more detail. Then it covers BEPL and demonstrates service composition into business processes with a realistic, although simple example BPEL process. Finally it shows how ESB provides a concrete infrastructure for SOA.
Who this book is written for?
This book is for architects and senior developers who are responsible for setting up SOA for integration for applications within the enterprise (intra-enterprise integration) and applications across enterprises (inter-enterprise integration or B2B).
SOA Approach to Integration: XML, Web services, ESB, and BPEL in real-world SOA projects
It is a good overview of SOA concepts combined with Integration viewpoint. Integration is handled within SOA. SOA is about integration. Process Oriented Architecture was a term that was introduced. POA is about using BPEL to manage business processes with existing services.
All in all, a good review of SOA issues including ESB, WS specifications, XML considerations. Good explanation of concepts plus some of the nitty gritty details as well. Good all round.
There are 6 chapters:
1.Integration Architecture, Principles and Patterns
Review of different integration technlologies and types of integration
overview of integration challenges, process is important
SOA and its associated technolgies is a valid approach to integration
2.Service and Process Oriented Architectures
POA is centered on the processes that “use” the services while SOA is about”providing” the services.
POA is the approach from the business side of things. It is about business process and main standards include BPEL, WSCI, etc.
3.Best Practices for Using XML for Integration
Review of XML with tops and issues to watch out for.
4.SOA and Web Services Approach for Integration
SOA is not web services but web services are the specification/technology of choice in the arena.
WS applies to both EAI and B2B as well as SOA.
Included some on the specification process.
5.BPEL and Process-Oriented Approach
Familiarization with BPEL and POA together.
With a sample application of BPEL towards a Billing Process
6.Service and Process Oriented Approach to Integration using Web Services
Putting it all together with the Enterprise Service Bus(ESB).
Discussion of the ESB and what it offers for Integration and SOA.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book does a good job of covering and tying together a broad range of material with respect to the title topic. It provides a varying degree of detail in different areas, for example a light treatment of SOA in chapter 2 yet a more in-depth look at XML in chapter 3. The intended audience is noted as architects and developers so this variance may make sense but it seems inconsistent at times. Overall I thought this was a good book for anyone interested in the topic and a good reference for those who have been tasked with an integration project.
Chapters:
1.) Integration Architecture, Principals, and Patterns – covers a wide variety of concepts including types of integration including data, application, process and presentation. It also speaks to layers of integration such as communications, brokering, routing, transformation and others. The authors touch on various technologies in the integration arena, for example, database access, message oriented middleware, remote procedure calls, transaction monitors and more. The chapter finishes up with a quick overview of the integration process, various practices activities and patterns.
2.) Service and Process-Oriented Architectures for Integration – talks a great deal about the concepts and standards that make up Service and Process Oriented Architecture. It is not an in-depth tutorial on either subject but is a good reference for the standards associated with them and why they are well suited for integration.
3.) Best Practices for Using XML for Integration – is closer to a tutorial on XML than a description of the architectural rationale and implications of it with respect to SOA. Since part of the target audience is developers the level of detail in this chapter is not un-warranted. This chapter includes a comparison of JAXP API’s and shows a number of XML schema and XSL stylesheet examples. It also speaks in reasonable detail to validation, security, encryption and performance considerations with respect to XML.
4.) SOA and Web Services Approach for Integration – steps more deeply into the area of web services and again much of it is directed to developers as opposed to architects. It contains a good overview of various patterns and contains some guidelines on their usage. The chapter contains a light review of web services for B2B and EAI and then a more detailed description and examples of interoperable web services, WSDL and WS-I.
5.) BPEL and the Process-Oriented Approach for Integration – speaks in more detail about BPEL and what the authors refer to as “the process-oriented approach to SOA-based integration.”. This chapter addresses the usual suspects of choreography, orchestration and complexity in a clear fashion. It then goes into more depth on writing BPEL processes and works through a fairly complete example.
6.) Service and Process-Oriented Approach to Integration Using Web Services – gets to the heart of the notion of using SOA for integration by delving into the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). This chapter covers the ESB at the appropriate level of abstraction for an architect and touches on key areas such as mediation, transformations, communications, transactions and security.
Conclusion:
I enjoyed the book and felt it delivered on the topic of SOA Approach to Integration. Trying to target both architects and developers is a difficult task but readers from either area will find something useful in this book. It is not the definitive work on SOA and Integration but it does a good job of tying together a broad range of material and will be a welcome addition to anyone’s technical library.
Rating: 4 / 5
The book demonstrates how SOA has risen in just a few years to a practical means of bolting together disparate online systems. Where these might have been coded and run with different languages and operating systems and web servers. Specifically, the book is concerned with the main choices out there these days. Java Enterprise Edition and Microsoft .NET. (Yes, Microsoft appears to be deprecating the “.NET” in some of its recent marketing, but for techies, that’s still how we all refer to it.) Oh, it turns out there is a 3rd alternative, as the book is careful to point out. CORBA.
There are a set of standards that make all this possible, and the text explains these. The lowest level is simply to use XML for data interchange. This gets around the alternative of binary data interchange, and all the compatibility problems therein. The latter was the realm of CORBA. But that proved brittle in many practical deployments.
Another standard is the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). This and BPEL let you construct interoperable “parts”, that can usefully interact with other programs on the net.
There is lots of practical advice. Like the fact that parsing large XML documents can be slow. So you should not use XML to communicate between tightly coupled components. Plus, the book offers numerous patterns that can simplify your design efforts. These patterns have proved successful in existing applications, and you should take advantage of them whenever possible.
Rating: 4 / 5
The authors having had real world experience on how to develop SOA, have presented this book focusing more on practicality. They have worked in different websites and online companies where they specialized either in the development of SOA or working on a specific web language that also leads to the architecture.
Because of their experience with Packt Publishing and their real world experience for SOA, Packt has chosen them to write this book about SOA Integration.
Clearly this book requires deep familiarization of the components discussed in SOA. XML and Web Services are extensively discussed so that developers will understand why the mark-up language (XML) and approach (Web Services) is perfect for integration which eventually leads to SOA. For those who are beginning in SOA, this book provides explanation in great detail in the basic concepts of SOA – from the challenges until specific terms that will greatly influence in building an application using the architecture.
What is even interesting is that it provides an insight to an alternate to JavaEE and the .Net framework. If you have a vague idea of what COBRA is, then this book will enlighten you further why this application web language could help you in building an application.
Some parts of the book are great for beginners while other parts of book are intended for advanced users. If you are looking for specific instructions on how to integrate XML to SOA, then this book will help you. For beginners or for those who just wants an in depth information of SOA, then this book will also be of great assistance.
Ultimately, this is a great addition to your library as it provides the basics while introducing you to the advanced concepts and principles behind SOA.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book was overall pretty good. The author details Service and Process Oriented Architectures (SOA/POA) and presents a solid approach to SOA integration. The highlight of the book is Chapter 6 (which, by the way, could have titled better!) that really dives into ESB (Enterprise Service Bus).
I gave it 4 stars mainly because it kept me interested throughout AND Chapter 6 was well worth the wait. Also, the author was direct and decisive in what he was saying. I never felt while reading that he was talking over my head or down to me from some higher plateau.
Some criticisms which kept it from a perfect 5 include:
(a) Too many repeated themes. I felt at times that I was reading the same sentence and paragraph over and over. Not a major thing, but I think I read that XML is a “standard” for organizations to exchange business data more than twice!
(b) The author throws around many acronyms, some of which without expanding. At one point, he used “PO” to refer to “Purchase Order” and I really had to stop reading and thing about what on earth a PO was (duh!). There are several examples of this throughout the text making it a bit difficult to read.
(c) Related to (b), I would have liked to read more background on some of the technologies discussed. Examples include the Java technologies that the author refers to throughout. I’m not a Java developer, so I felt a little behind in some of the discussion.
(d) I think the author spent too much time on his low-level XML discussion. I realize that XML is integral to SOA but for a book designed for “architects” and “senior developers”, as the back cover suggests, it seemed too deep for “architects” to care about and too shallow for “senior developers”. It might have been better to present an XML primer and leave it at that.
(e) By reading this book, I DO NOT feel ready to build an SOA, nor do I feel qualified to jump into a team implementing SOA.
Chapter 1 was a sufficient setup for the chapters to come. It would have been good to build a better case for SOA, though. If I was on the fence about SOA, I don’t think this book would have convinced me that my organization needed to go down this path. This chapter does however provide a lot good background and helps draw the line between different integration strategies.
Chapter 2 introduces the ESB — which for me is the most interesting aspect of the SOA approach. There is also a good discussion about processes and orchestration, which was enlightening (coming from me, who has no real world SOA experience).
Chapter 3 was the lowlight. I found myself skipping ahead when the author started discussion XML schemas, namespaces, declarations, and the like. I know this stuff already and was wondering how an “architect” or “senior developer” (I’ve been called both) would treat this chapter. I concluded that they would do essentially what I did: skim it. It is too light to be a reference and too heavy to be of any practical value.
Chapter 4 was better than the previous chapter. I like history (IT Evolution, and WS Specifications) and discussions on Patterns (the author discusses integration patters, business patterns, composites, application patterns, and runtime patters). He does however loose me a bit on writing WSDL and the simple web service example. I’ve written several web services and understand the concepts so I found myself skipping ahead a bit.
Jaded by some of what I read in Chapters 3 and 4, Chapter 5 got me back in the mood. BPEL. Finally. The book had been talking about BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) on-and-off and now this chapter gave me a heavy dose. Good job.
Chapter 6 was my favorite chapter by far. ESB is an area of interest for me, and to have it explained and examined in the context of SOA was eye opening. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I wanted to read this book in the first place.
All-in-all, I learned a lot from this material. I took a few notes, which will lead to further research on my part. This book presents a good overview of some of the complexities and key points in building an SOA infrastructure/environment. Get it if that is what you’re looking for!
Rating: 4 / 5