Review By: Peter Gabris
06/23/2010Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is going to stay with us for a long time. Even critics who feel SOA is merely an obvious evolution of current, well-deployed architectures have to admit that this advancement is a good one. There are numerous books that go deep into the theory of SOA and some hint that SOA is Web services in a fancy coat. Why do we need another book?

Applied SOA—Service-Oriented Architecture and Design Strategies book fits nicely in the gap between the SOA theory and the code crafting practice. The authors are not only well-versed in the theory, they obviously have enough practical experience in the subject.

The first part of the book titled "Understanding SOA" is an overview of the architecture. It covers all the theory you'll need. Instead of going into details and comparisons of each competing theoretical model, the authors give you a general overview of the existing theories and then usually choose a single approach they found efficient in their practice.

The following nine chapters explore the details of each step in the design process. This part, titled "Designing SOA," is the central part of the book that provides a detailed guidance of how to design services. Moreover, in chapters 8 through 12, you will learn how to build enterprise SOA solutions.

The last part of the book contains two detailed case studies to illustrate the concepts and techniques presented throughout the book. The first case focuses on designing business services to support business processes. The second case is about integrating existing applications into a service-oriented solution.

Do not miss the Appendixes! The checklist in the Appendix B, titled "Evaluating SOA Services," is, by itself, worth the whole price of the book. Each concept explained is immediately followed by practical examples, techniques, and helpful tips.

Still, why should a software quality specialist care about an architecture book? The main SOA raison d'être is to better handle complexity. Our word and software systems are not getting simpler. Complex systems have complex quality problems, and service-oriented system quality starts with the architecture and design. Moreover, we need to understand the new paradigm in order to design fitting strategies for quality assurance.

When you have a need for an SOA book, you'll want to have this one. It has it all.