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The authors of SOA for Dummies replied to my review of the book. . There are certainly some points we disagree on, and perhaps this will foster some healthy discussion on terms and technologies that are part of SOA.

The first issue the authors took not on is that I "seem to think that BPM does not require SOA." They state "Initially BPM was a separate development - an evolution of workflow and it actually didn’t require SOA until it embraced web services as reusable components. Nowadays though you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks the two are separate. Indeed, the reviewer changes her mind about this a few paragraphs later when she declares how business process monitoring, management, and dashboards increase the business value of SOA. How do they do that if they don’t even require SOA?". Actually I did not change my mind. You absolutely positively can implement BPM without SOA. But while SOA is NOT required, it will certainly accelerate the BPM implementation. Furthermore, implementing BPM on top of SOA will increase business agility. I view these as synergistic, not dependent technologies. What do you think?

Next they conclude "the reviewer is quite wrong" when it comes to adapters and provide a definition from Enterprise SOA. Frankly, I've been covering the middleware space since the term was coined. I remember the introduction of adapters. In fact, it took a while for the industry to settle on the term as some vendors called them adapters, some connectors. Basically, they're used to simplify integration, obviating the need to program to each applications' particular API. As application vendors are starting to provide Web service interfaces, adapters will no longer needed to integrate to these applications. So I still disagree with the authors' assertion "No adapters, no SOA".

I appreciate their explanation of the SOA supervisor. "For the sake of simplification we made the “SOA supervisor” the connecting link be-tween the plumbing and SOA itself. We didn’t invent the idea of the SOA supervisor we simply extrapolated it from products that are early attempts at approaching the problem. Some hoped-for capabilities, such as automated resource provisioning and global optimization of resources cannot be achieved without such a component. Neither can there be any automation of system management services, because ultimately they can only derive from service level monitoring." My problem with the term as they described the capabilities in the book is that the capabilities do not exist today. There are technologies that perform some of these capabilities but instead of explaining the requirements, and the types of technologies that you can actually buy to fulfill these requirements, the authors describe some fantasy software that you cannot buy. I find this misleading and confusing. This is what Richard Akerman, technology architect and information security officer at NRC CISTI, Canada's National Science Library and Publisher, had to say about the SOA supervisor: "I also want to address the SOA Supervisor, and the whole idea of automatically monitoring Service-Level Agreements. I think this is very deep voodoo." . He also calls the chapter on adapters "baloney".

The authors called my critique a deliberate hatchet job. I think that is totally unfair. I started the review by saying "The light and humorous style helps make the information they present very easy to digest. SOA for Dummies achieves this tone. I admire the clever chapter and section titles such as “Noah’s Architecture”, “I never metadata I didn’t like” or “Talkin ‘bout My Federation”. It also presents the business concepts and benefits clearly. It’s written well, and enjoyable to read." After all, that is the purpose of the book - to entertain while educating. Now it's up to you to discern whether the book has more pros than cons. Attend the SOA in Action virtual conference Oct. 30 & 31st for a chance to win a copy of the book. Then let us know what you think.

Posted by bethgb at 11:43 AM in SOA | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us

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