It was great to see Beth Gold-Bernstein's latest post on SOA: Getting It Right, copies of which will be awarded to five selected attendees at next week's SOA in Action megaconference here at ebizQ. This past summer, I had the honor of emceeing the launch of the book, and discuss insights from the book with the various co-authors. The book actually had seven co-authors from various disciplines, each providing a unique perspective on getting started with SOA.
Beth cited some of her favorite passages, including te chapter was Hub Vandervoort’s explanation on ESBs, which discusses different types of ESBs, and the different applications they can be used for. Beth reports that a big "Ah Ha" moment also came while pondering the difference between David Besemer’s depiction of service levels and Hemant Ramachandra’s service layer model. That is, "there is no one agreed-upon reference model for service layers," she notes. "Most of the organizations I have spoken with have low level data access services (read database calls - JDBC, ODBC calls). While we may be starting to tire of talking and writing about SOA, we still have a long way to go before realize the full benefits."
And that's why the book was written -- to help organizations get started on this SOA journey, and to show the current thinking and best practices. It's actually a quick read, and drills right down to the essentials of getting moving with SOA. As author and editor Jim Green, CEO of Composite Software, explained, he purposely kept the length of the book to about 100 pages. "We wanted to write something that could be absorbed over the course of a coast-to-coast airplane ride," he said.
Jim was joined in writing the book by six other well-known SOA experts-- including Paul Butterworth, Luc Clement, Hemant Ramachandra, Jeff Schneider, Hub Vandervoort, and David Besemer.
The theme of the book? I can boil it down to three words -- as Nike put it: "Just Do It." It doesn't matter what kind of SOA budget you have, or even if you have a budget at all -- there are still practical steps you can take today to get started.
And don't worry about not getting every detail -- things will evolve. In fact, service-orienting large-scale systems cannot be fully thought through in the early stages, Jim Green said. One of SOA's greatest failures is that it often is subjected to paralysis by analysis. "The longer that you ponder the imponderables as you plan, the lower the probability of your success."
Or, as he put it in the first chapter of the book: "No one thinks it all through at once. No one puts all the pieces in place perfectly. But once on the right path, it is more straightforward than it first seems, and additional pieces fall into place logically."
In fact, one of the most powerful messages coming out of the book is that SOA is not a luxury reserved for the corporations with the deepest pockets. SOA is something everyone can take advantage of and benefit from. You don’t need to get caught up in trying to boil the ocean. Transformation starts with small steps, and SOA success will happen in increments.
Some advice from the book:
- "SOA is the only good alternative for building large-scale systems"
- "Design service interfaces that are simple, consistent, well-documented, and motivated by business requirements to ensure adoption, reusability, and expandability"
- "Understand the difference between a service registry and a service repository"
- "Develop a solid understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the basic Web services request/reply protocols versus the enhanced capabilities of an ESB."
- "Draw up well-defined guidelines for identifying, modeling, implementing, discovering, consuming, and deploying services."
- "Complement training with change management to ensure new skills are utilized."
- "Start anywhere, but start nonetheless."
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