Enterprise SOA : Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices (The Coad Series) Dirk Krafzig, Karl Banke, Dirk Slama Date: 09 November, 2004   —   $33.99   —   Book product page Rating:

Overall Comments

This is pretty good book that focuses on SOA from the point of view of business, not just technology. The authors provide a good insight into the history behind the evolution of SOA, guidance and methodology to develop and IT Strategy around adopting SOA in your enterprise, and good examples in terms of case studies from the real world. Obviously the authors have been around the block a few times. I strongly recommend this book for the bookshelf of enterprise architects, IT managers, and consultants.

Audience

 I think the title of this book is a little misleading. Although the book coveres SOA best practices, it is primarily focused on understanding SOA in order to create an IT Strategy roadmap. In that sense, it will be of more interest to architects, project/project managers, and executive management. Not really a book that will be of much interest to developers. Although guidelines to SOA architects are interespersed through the book, I would expect a best practices book to be organized by prescriptive recommendations organized by specific topics, such as Security, Transactions, etc.

Content

The first part of the book (Chapters 1-3)  made for interesting reading as it provides a good background on how SOA has evolved from programming, distributed computing, and business computing concepts. However, if you are already familiar with the history and distributed computing concepts, you can probably skip this. If you have the time, do read it - as it refreshes the information.

It was a little confusing to get to "Part I" after reading 3 chapters. But that is a nit I felt like picking. Overall, the chapter on Architecture Roadmap was very informative. In terms of organization, I would have preferred to have Chapters 4 and 5 under a separate section, as they focus on SOA concepts. Chapter 6 is the one that gets into the Roadmap. However, the content was very well put together. Chapter 7 offers a great overview of BPM in the context of SOA, although I feel that in terms of flow, it should have come before the authors got into discussion on the architecture roadmap. Prpbably having Chapters 4, 5, and 7 in a separate section would have made the organization of the book a little better. I read them in that order.

To me, chapters 8-10 cover the meat of the technical best practices, organized by the three main areas - Process, ESB, and then "SOA in Action" which put it all together in the form of SOA design patterns (although this term was not specifically used in the book).

The Organizational roadmap (Chapters 11-13) makes for very informative reading, and I really liked the organization of the material. It covers several non-technical aspects of SOA that need to be considered when devising implementing SOA strategy in an organization. This is also a good best practices/guidelines section. The authors cover crucial areas like project management including planning and technical risk analysis, and the aspects of the organizational SOA roadmap. The tables on pages 252-254 are a great tool for consultants to take to clients and specifically address the "why" of moving to SOA from different stakeholder perspectives. This is valuable information to take if you were, for example, organizing an SOA workshop.

Case Studies

Four case studies are provided in ample depth. I feel this was one of the most useful sections of the book. I like the way the studies are organized - Project Scope (including Technical and Business Impacts), Implementation, Technology  architecture details, Lessons Learned. A great flow and good examples of SOA in action.

Closing Comments

Buy this book, and read it if you are interested in understanding SOA, its implications, and/or the stages in adopting it within an orgarnization.