Service-Oriented Architecture : A Planning and Implementation Guide for Business and Technology
April 28, 2010 by BPELforum · 5 Comments
- ISBN13: 9780471768944
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Praise for Service-Oriented Architecture
“This book provides a superb overview of the SOA topic. Marks and Bell provide practical guidance across the entire SOA life cycle-from business imperatives and motivations to the post-deployment business and technical metrics to consider. With this book, Marks and Bell demonstrate a unique ability to take the complex dynamics of SOA, and through an eloquent set of metaphors, models, and principles, provide an understandable and insightful how-to manual for both technical and business executives. This will become a required handbook for any organization implementing SOA.”
—Dan Bertrand, Enterprise Technology Officer & EDS Fellow, EDS Corporation
“A fundamental breakthrough in the business and technology perspectives of SOA-this book belongs in every software developer, architect, and IT executive library. Marks and Bell demonstrate a creative and practical approach to building complex, service-oriented systems. I especially liked the hands-on perspective brought to multiple aspects of SOA. A must-have guide in the technology turbulence of the future.”
—Ariel Aloni, Chief Technology Officer, SunGard Data Management Solutions
“This outstanding text gets straight to the heart of the matter, cutting through the hyperbole and discussing how to drive real business value through SOA. It will certainly impact my behavior, our governance models, and, subsequently, the successful business outcomes we derive as we continue to embrace SOA. A must-read for battle-scarred SOA veterans and fledgling architects alike.”
—Christopher Crowhurst, Vice President and Chief Architect, Thomson Learning
“Too often, SOA has been perceived as ‘all about the technology’-standards, technology stacks, operational monitoring, and the like. In this book, Marks and Bell expand beyond the technology to provide a refreshing business-driven perspective to SOA, connecting the dots between business requirements, architecture, and development and operations, and overlaying these perspectives with tried-and-true governance techniques to keep SOA initiatives on track. A must-read for those leading the charge to adopt SOA within their enterprise.”
—Brent Carlson, Chief Technology Officer, LogicLibrary and coauthor of San Francisco Design Patterns: Blueprints for Business Software
“Marks and Bell have captured a wealth of practical experience and lessons learned in what has become the hottest topic in software development. In this book, they explain in detail what works and what does not, from procedural issues to technical challenges. This book is an invaluable reference for organizations seeking the benefits of SOAs.”
—Dr. Jeffrey S. Poulin, System Architect, Lockheed Martin and author of Measuring Software Reuse: Principles, Practices, and Economic Models
“One of the last things companies often consider when implementing a business solution such as SOA is the impact on people. Marks and Bell provide an in-depth look at ‘what has to change’ from a process standpoint to make any SOA implementation a success. A great read for those considering to embark on an enterprise SOA and looking for the right mix of people, process, and products.”
—Alan Himler, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing, LogicLibrary
SOA is a complex topic and a complex organizational goal
Service-Oriented Architecture: A Planning and Implementation Guide for Business and Technology shows you how to plan, implement, and achieve SOA value through its prescriptive approach, joining the business and strategic perspective to the technical and architectural perspective.
Applicable to all industries, technology platforms, and operating environments, this innovative book provides you with the essential strategies to drive greater value from your SOA and realize your business goals.
Service-Oriented Architecture : A Planning and Implementation Guide for Business and Technology
Worst Book in terms of $ I have invested. May be the person who wants to do just goofing can use the terminology from this book
Rating: 1 / 5
“SOA is only a concept”, This is the only useful line in the book once you are a programmer.
If your job consists in saying many unconcluding words at your job meetings, maybe this book has something to teach.
Rating: 2 / 5
Amazon deleted my last negative review so I’m writing another one. This book is nothing but middle manager buzzwards and little content. Beware all the 5 star ‘real name’ reviews below. Someone is stacking the deck on this one.
Rating: 1 / 5
The book is a decent entry point into the somewhat muddled world of SOA. I rate it a 1 star, however, because the book is heavy on marketing hype and light on details/content. I bought this book primarily because it had consistent high ratings from other reviewers, but I think it’s likely that these reviewers are fake, just propping up the rating (if you look at most of the 5 star reviewers, they only rate one book – this one).
The book paints SOA as the ultimate enterprise IT panacea. The solution to all of your business problems. SOA of course can ameliorate some of the tangle of entprise architecture, but I believe, as Fred Brooks said, “there’s no silver bullet”.
For example, take this statement:
“Although nearly every business and IT executive for the last 30 years has wistfully dreamed of achieving business agility, there has been little real progress toward that end save for a few exceptional firms. For most organizations, business agility is a vision without reality. Until now. SOA and services provide a means to achieving true business agility.”
Obviously this is massive hyperbole. There have of course been a myriad of improvements in business agility in the past 30 years, some big, some small. Take the PC, the internet, the web, oo, uml, automated testing, open source, faster hardware, etc. These have all helped businesses build software faster, cheaper, better. The problem is that complexity has out-paced us, not that SOA is filling a void of improvements.
They buttress these sweeping statements with numbers, but those too seem a bit groundless (at least I saw no footnotes to back these up). For example:
“Imagine you can launch new products and services 30% faster than your competitors because you eliminated friction within your enterprise…”
…or…
“The time to implement needed system changes to support these new products has been cut by 25%…”
Further, the book is also quite redundant and obvious. Take chapter 2 – section: “SOA is all about Services”. First sentence:
“Service-oriented architecture is nothing without services.”
Probably true, but it’s a bit like like saying “Object Oriented Design is nothing without objects”. Next sentence:
“Services are the primary asset of SOA”.
Two sentences later:
“The fundamental unit of an SOA is a service.”
3 sentences later:
“An SOA with services is useless unless those available services actually are consumed.”
Sure, but any system is useless unless there are users or consumers. And finally, to sum up the section, they end on:
“But why are services so important to an SOA? …”
Anyway, I’m sorry to bash this book so hard, but I felt compelled to write this review because (a) the book is pretty light on content and (b) I feel like there is some duplicity in all these positive reviews…and if that’s the case, it’s disappointing.
Rating: 1 / 5
I have to agree with the gentleperson (sorry I don’t know your gender) from Milan Italy (Fadalti Aldo ALESSANDRO). This book is not written for the technical person (even though it claims that it is) except to show how disconnected the business side of the puzzle is from the reality of the Information Technology side. This book is at about 75,000 feet in terms of concept and is nowhere near a first step at a real-life implementation. I’m sure these gentlemen could do it, and I’m not doubting their credentials or capabilities, it is just that this book is not even a modest attempt at stating anything but the obvious at what problems SOA attempts to solve!
Sorry! I am very disappointed in this book and really can’t believe the other reviewers and how hearty they were in their comments. This book was completely worthless to me. It does not give even one useful scenario IMHO!
Rating: 1 / 5