Product Description
This book spells out guidelines and strategies for successfully using ServiceOriented Architecture (SOA) in large-scale projects. SOA represents the latestparadigm in distributed computing and middleware development. However,SOA is not a revolution, but rather an evolution in software architecture. SOAis a collection of best practice software construction principles accompanied byproven methodologies in development and project management.This book is unique in that it offers a pragmatic approach to the topic. Theauthors borrow from their more than forty years of collective enterpriseexperience, and offer a frank discussion of the challenges associated withadopting SOA. They also help readers ensure that their organization does notbecome too closely tied to a specific technology. The result is a detailedintroduction to the topic and an architectural blueprint for implementing SOA.
Enterprise SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices


I was surpised to see that this book uses 4 chapters to go over what SOA is and what 3 tier architecture evolved.
This book may be useful for someone who is oblivious to enterprise architecture developments in the past 5 years.
The authors wander from one vague concept to another not really laying any sort of foundation. There is a whole page that explains “synchrony”.
I would expect the authors to tackle issues like concurrent execution of multiple versions of the same service. Security patterns. Preasent at least a few “anti-patterns”. I also wanted to see them address issues around comnpensating transactions and extra large payloads in the SOA domain.
This book provided to me the same level of information I would get while chatting with a few techies over a couple of beers.
The only reason you wouild ever want to buy this book is if you had been asleep for the past 5 years and you want to “speak intelligently” (for example a salesperson for a software vendor) about SOA.
One place to get some indepth analysis of todays pressing enterprise computing issues is on the blog at http://softissues.blogspot.com
Rating: 1 / 5
I just got a new employee, a very bright young computer science graduate. She knows all about a half dozen languages, databases, operating systems and more. I’m sure she could write wonderful code.
Unfortunately she has no concept of the retards that are going to be running the machines that put the data into the system. I suspect that she has even less understanding about the managers that are going to be using the output of the system to make real decisions. And I know that she has no concept at all about getting a project finished just in time for the specifications to change to meet new laws, new ideas, or just the way a new VP would like to see the information.
One of the first things I did was give her my copy of this book. She won’t understand/believe it just yet. But this will at least give her the framework to hopefully understand just what we are trying to do. The case studies in particular just might help her to understand that programming in the real world isn’t a quick overnight project but an ongoing process, a journey not a destination.
I have to agree with other commenters that this isn’t a complete story, it’s an overview, a summary, a great place to start.
Rating: 5 / 5
The authors attempt an ambitious goal of covering many SOA topics – but their resulting text come across as scattered – vague – and lacking a coherent and practical application.
Thomas Erl’s books are much better written – and have a coherent approch to buliding a solid body of knowledge.
For a manager / salesperson wanting a broad overview of SOA – they might be better served by reading Service Oriented Architecture For Dummies
Service Oriented Architecture For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
Rating: 2 / 5
I mostly agree with all former posts. My contribution to the comments is that the book focuses only on proprietary platforms and grossly misses the point on how to use Open Source platforms as an alternative, thus doing the same stuff with a much smaller budget.
Rating: 4 / 5
This was my first SOA book. I am involved in many work groups within IBM and this book closely follows those
developments. I consider this book an excellent introduction to SOA because it is so comprehensive.
Rating: 4 / 5