SOA/SOI Learning Guide

SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture)
SOI (Service-Oriented Integration)
SOM (Service-Oriented Management)
This guide explains what service-oriented architecture is and how service-oriented integration fits into the world of Web services. You'll find service-oriented articles, tutorials, examples, tips, white papers, expert advice and more to pump up your SOA and SOI know-how quickly.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
   SOA Quick Start
   SOA Articles
   SOA Best Practices/Tutorials
   Industry Quotes about SOA
   SOA White Papers
   Q&A: Service-Oriented Architecture
   Q&A: Service-Oriented Management
   Webcasts with SOA experts
   Online SOA Resources
   More Learning Guides

Dr Hao He: "SOA is an architectural style whose goal is to achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents. A service is a unit of work done by a service provider to achieve desired end results for a service consumer. Both provider and consumer are roles played by software agents on behalf of their owners."

SOA Quick Start
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• Glossary Definition: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)


• Glossary Definition: Service-Oriented Integration (SOI)


• Glossary Definition: Service-Oriented Management (SOM)


• What is service-oriented architecture? (The Web Services Advisor)


• What is service-oriented architecture? (O'Reilly & Associates)


• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Definition (Barry & Associates)


• Service-Oriented Architecture Explained (O'Reilly & Associates)


• Why service-oriented management? (ZapThink)


• What is the shape of a service-oriented architecture? (ZapThink)


• What is the difference between a service and a Web service? (SearchWebServices.com)


• What is a service? (SearchWebServices.com)


• An introduction to service-oriented integration (WRQ)


• Service-Oriented Architecture: A Primer (Candle Corp.)

SOA and SOI Articles
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• Browse this collection of editor-selected SOA articles bookmarked from around the Web. (SearchWebServices.com)


• Commentary: Calling the elusive Enterprise Architect: You're more important than ever. (Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink)


• Article: Enterprise identity management: Essential SOA prerequisite. (Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink)


• Article: Tactics, not strategy, drive SOA adoption. (Phil Wainewright, Loosely Coupled)


• Article: Modeling for SOA. (CBDi Forum)


• Article: Service-Oriented Process: Thinking about processes before services. (Ronald Schmelzer, Founder and Senior Analyst, ZapThink)


• Article: A service oriented architecture allows better alignment with business processes. (Brian Schaffner, associate director, Fujitsu Consulting)


• Article: SOAs: More change ahead for IT consulting. (Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink)


• Article: Web services management. (The Web Services Advisor)


• Interview: Weaving SOAs into a Web services fabric. (Graham Glass, chief architect, The Mind Electric)


• Article: There is no Web services yellow brick road. (Bill Robins, partner and co-founder, The Stencil Group)


• Read this article called Collation tunes up infrastructures for Web services. (John Hogan, News Editor, SearchWebServices.com)

SOA Best Practices and Tutorials
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• This SOA Crash Course is a collection of helpful content to get you up-to-speed quickly. (SearchWebServices.com)


• Ten emerging 'Best Practices' for building SOAs. (Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink)


• Service-oriented architecture using Jini (Ron Dearing, Senior Software Engineer, Cysive, Inc.)


• Realizing service-oriented architectures using Web services: Beyond the hype (Ali Arsanjani and Bruce Anderson, IBM)


• Creating target-rich environments in a service-oriented architecture (Steve Burbeck and Steve Graham, IBM)

Industry Quotes about SOA and SOI
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• James Phillips, chief strategist and senior vice president at Actional: "Not only does it demonstrate the importance of managing Web services in service-oriented architectures, but it also paves the way for the big management vendors trying to deliver on utility- and adaptive-computing initiatives. You can't execute on these grand computing visions without managing Web services."
• Graham Glass, chief architect, The Mind Electric: "Never confuse a service-oriented architecture with a Web service. A company can have one without the other, but together they make a great team."
• Jim Russell, Director of Emerging Technologies, IBM: "Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web services go hand in hand. SOA describes the general concept of architecting applications and solutions around coarse-grained, loosely-coupled components services."
• Ronald Schmelzer, Founder and Senior Analyst, ZapThink: "The vast majority of integration solutions will be based on Web services by 2006 at the latest. The market for these solutions will grow from last year's figure of $ 435 million to $ 6.2 billion in 2006."
• Brent Sleeper, partner, The Stencil Group: "If service-oriented architecture represents the technical vision driving web services, then the service-oriented enterprise reflects a change in the human, business process, and organizational governance factors that shape how IT interacts with the business. The well-designed technical backbone of an SOA helps deliver upon the promise of reduced maintenance costs and better interoperability, but it is the application and management of the technology that delivers bottom-line productivity benefits."

Service-Oriented White Papers
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• Introduction to Web Services Architecture: SOA (Systinet)


• Mainframe and service-oriented architecture (DKSoft)


• Web Services: Sharing Business Processes over the Internet (SeeBeyond)


• Using service-oriented architecture and component-based development to build Web service applications (Rational)


• Principles of Service Oriented Integration (Propylon)

SOA Expert Advice
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• How will Web services create service-oriented architectures?


• What does it mean that service-oriented development will be coupled with service-oriented architecture?


• What are the essential programming components of developing a SOA?


• How do the lessons of component-based systems apply to construction of service-based architectures?


• Most people talk about SOA and Web services in the same breath. What other means of SOA exist other than Web services?


• Do I need to learn any new programming languages to work with SOA? Or are standard programming languages sufficient?


• How do you handle application and user state in a Service-Oriented Architecture?


• What is the implication on data access (JDBC and ODBC) of Service Oriented Architectures? Please contrast with data access via these protocols in the Client Server Architecture.


• Got SOA questions? Pose your own SOA question to service-oriented architecture expert Ryan Ireland of WingateWeb.

SOM Expert Advice
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• How easy is it to implement a services-oriented management solution?


• What is the difference between services-oriented management and normal types of application/enterprise infrastructure management?


• Who are the services-oriented management market leaders?


• SOA are said to be contract-defined and policy-governed. What type of technologies are available today to define the contract? What are the "holes"? How can SOAs be policy-governed?


• What are the characteristics of a good Services-Oriented Management (SOM ) solution?


• ZapThink predicts the SOM market will grow to $9.2 billion by 2007. Who do you think will reap the most benefit from that--large vendors like IBM, or smaller companies in the WSM market?


• Why is the transition to service-oriented management so difficult for businesses? What can companies do to make it easier?


• Got SOM questions? Pose your own SOM question to service-oriented management expert Brian Connell, Founder and CTO, of WestGlobal.

Webcasts with Leading SOA Experts
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• Watch: Adoption Strategies for Service-Oriented Architectures with expert Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst at ZapThink. This webcast is aimed at IT managers and executives who are struggling with exactly how to go about justifying, planning, and building an SOA. Listen and learn.
• Watch: "Using Web services for Service-Oriented Application Integration" with expert David Linthicum, Chief Technology Officer, Mercator Software Inc. Learn approaches, architectures, and enabling technologies you can implement today to address the challenges of application integration using the new paradigm of SOA integration.
• Watch: Service-oriented integration: Using Web services for application, system and business integration with expert Ronald Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst of ZapThink. Integration is more than just plugging two systems together. Find out how SOI technologies and approaches solve integration issues, and show the potential ROI that can be realized with SOI approaches.
• Watch: Service-oriented architectures unplugged with expert Drew Engstrom, senior market strategist for Web services, Sun Microsystems. Drew Engstrom delves into Web services from a pragmatic, customer-driven perspective that will address three critical points of impact that result from the adoption of service-oriented architectures.

Online SOA Resources
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• Comprehensive collection of editor-selected SOA resources (SearchWebServices.com)
  
• Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures (Barry & Associates)


• Service Oriented Enterprise (ServiceOriented.org)


• SOA research and analysis (ZapThink)


• SOA research and analysis (Gartner)


• SOA research and analysis (CBDi Forum)


• Archived Poll: When does your company plan to start adopting a service-oriented architecture? (SearchWebServices.com)