http://www.servicetechmag.com The Service Technology Magazine is a monthly online publication provided by SOA Systems Inc. and Prentice Hall/PearsonPTR and is officially associated with the "Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl." SOA en-us Copyright 2012, SOA Systems Inc. http://www.servicetechmag.com The CloudPatterns.org site has finally emerged from its beta stage and has been re-launched with fully edited production content, along with refined navigation and many new diagrams. In the end, over 40 design patterns and over a dozen compound patterns made the final cut, while several others have been put on the candidate patterns list, making them subject to further review and development. I’d like to thank the many subject matter experts that reached out to contribute and provide feedback and I look forward to seeing this catalog continue to grow in alignment with how cloud computing... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:02.27.13 http://www.servicetechmag.com/170/0213-1 The various ways in which SOA design principles can be synergized with Big Data are explored. Complex event processing, Apache Hadoop metadata management, scalable Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and front-end analytics are among the methods that can render Big Data-as-a-Service (BDaaS). The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu," 1928. The domain of information fueled not only by enterprise data such as general ledger accounting... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/170/0213-1#When:02.27.13 http://www.servicetechmag.com/170/0213-2 The Oracle SOA Suite is a middleware offering that can be implemented in compliance with service-orientation principles. Conversely, the features provided by this platform can help optimize the application of these principles to facilitate the connectivity and reuse of shared services and service-oriented solutions. This article explores the marriage of service-orientation with the tools and technologies of the Oracle SOA Suite. Preliminary consultation with experienced industry professionals and identification of the market's best practices can help... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/170/0213-2#When:02.27.13 http://www.servicetechmag.com/170/0213-3 The capability granularity and constraint granularity of a service contract can greatly impact performance of the service architecture. A service consumer communicating over a network connection can experience significant latency between request and response when exchanging large messages over poor network connections. Network latency is often beyond your control, especially when you consume third party services over a public network. Nevertheless you can architect your services to minimize the performance impact of remote service interactions... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/170/0213-3#When:02.27.13 http://www.servicetechmag.com The CloudPatterns.org site has finally emerged from its beta stage and has been re-launched with fully edited production content, along with refined navigation and many new diagrams. In the end, over 40 design patterns and over a dozen compound patterns made the final cut, while several others have been put on the candidate patterns list, making them subject to further review and development. I’d like to thank the many subject matter experts that reached out to contribute and provide feedback and I look forward to seeing this catalog continue to grow in alignment with how cloud computing... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:01.18.13 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I69/1212-1 Social media has become a popular topic in current times. People have shifted the way in which they are connected to each other, from direct interaction to virtual communication. Web technology has evolved and transformed into a social Web, which enables people to collaborate in the virtual space. Building a social Web is not as simple as developing and choosing appropriate programming languages to implement. High volumes of people interacting through virtual social space drove the social Web to adopting the capabilities to give realtime... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I69/1212-1#When:01.18.13 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I69/1212-2 Governments and organizations worldwide are researching greener technologies, techniques, and tips in order to reduce rising energy costs and achieve environmental sustainability. With IT positioned as an effective business enabler, organizations have to allocate higher budgets to meet the rising capital and operational costs of IT centers to support and sustain business operations, outputs, and offerings. However, data centers were found to require enormous amounts of energy. Green IT products, processes, platforms, and practices are being... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I69/1212-2#When:01.18.13 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I69/1212-3 Tuning service runtime performance will improve the utilization of individual services as well as the performance of service compositions that aggregate these services. Even though it is important to optimize every service architecture, agnostic services in particular, need to be carefully tuned to maximize their potential for reuse and recomposition.the logic within a service is comprised of the collective logic of service capabilities, we need to begin by focusing on performance optimization on the service capability level. In this... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I69/1212-3#When:01.18.13 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I69/1212-4 In this section, the ECSA is evaluated based on the model and framework we presented in this paper and it is analyzed using several typical enterprise cloud service architectures as our case studies. ECSA style is defined as a combination of ESOA and ECC in Section 3. Here, we show how to analyze the ECSA style based on and the framework defined in Section 2. Based on, we should show that the two styles ESOA and ECC are conflict-free, that is, semantically no contradictions should occur. Let us assume that ESOAl and ECCl are interpretations... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I69/1212-4#When:01.18.13 http://cloudpatterns.org/ CloudPatterns.org is a community site dedicated to documenting a master patterns catalog comprised of design patterns that capture and modularize technology-centric solutions distinct or relevant to modern-day cloud computing platforms and business-centric cloud technology architectures. Part of this catalog is comprised of compound patterns that tackle contemporary cloud delivery and deployment models (such as public cloud, IaaS, etc.) and decompose them into sets of co-existent patterns that establish core and optional feature sets... SOA http://cloudpatterns.org/#When:01.18.13 http://www.servicetechmag.com Technology mechanisms represent well-defined IT artifacts that are established within an IT industry and commonly distinct to a certain computing model or platform. The technology-centric nature of cloud computing requires the establishment of a formal level of mechanisms to be able to explore how a given pattern can be applied differently via alternative combinations of mechanism implementations. This not only standardizes proven practices and solutions in a design pattern format, it further adds standardization to pattern application options. It is for this reason that over 28... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:11.22.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I68/1112-1 The uniform contract establishes a set of base methods used to perform basic data communication functions. As we've explained, this high-level of functional abstraction is what makes the uniform contract reusable to the extent that we can position it as the sole, over-arching data exchange mechanism for an entire inventory of services. Besides its inherent simplicity, this part of a service inventory architecture automatically results in the baseline standardization of service contract elements and message exchange. The standardization of HTTP... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I68/1112-1#When:11.22.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I68/1112-2 In my recent trip to London to present at the 5th International SOA Symposium and 4th International Cloud Symposium, I observed more than 100 organizations participated with keynotes speakers from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency. Service design principles have been applied successfully in many industries including Life Sciences and Astronomy. After the meetings, I visited University of Cambridge where Charles Darwin hypothesized biological evolution by natural selection and Stephen Hawking... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I68/1112-2#When:11.22.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I68/1112-3 Enterprise Cloud Computing (ECC) is a new paradigm of distributed computing. ECC enables a new business model for enterprise computing and provides a new enterprise architectural style which brings new patterns and design principles into Enterprise Architecture (EA). The enterprise service-oriented architecture (ESOA) is an enterprise architectural style which is an abstraction of concrete enterprise service-oriented architectures. The ESOA includes SOA architectural elements, service design patterns as well as principles, and SOA quality... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I68/1112-3#When:11.22.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I68/1112-4 For many years traditional software has been your size, effort and cost estimated using Function Point Analysis (FPA). It's the most clear and easier method because is based in the user perceived functionalities of a defined scope. Other techniques are based in mathematical formulas or in the technical factors like lines of code. User perceived functionalities are identified using requirements description, application GUIs and data models in traditional project, but when we initiate a project we have a business vision of the project... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I68/1112-4#When:11.22.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com I'm very pleased to announce the launch of three new Websites in which we have been able to better organize large collections of new, established and upcoming content. These sites were carefully designed to serve as educational resources, supplements to text books and general online reference content. Further efforts will be made to better integrate the content on WhatIsCloud.com with the CloudPatterns.org beta site that was launched last month. This will occur in tandem with necessary updates and corrections to the beta cloud patterns content. Stay tuned for more updates.... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:10.25.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I67/1012-1 This article is dedicated to the taxonomy of the Service Repository and the various ways it is used by the lightweight Service Broker for dynamic Service Compositions. The first article that was published earlier in August discussed the entities and service attributes that required looking up from different layers of service frameworks (Orchestration, Service Composition and Adapter services). Here we will examine relations between entities in repository, suitability for DB implementation and how they can be presented in the XML Message... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I67/1012-1#When:10.25.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I67/1012-2 This article discusses the SOA suite offerings from present-day middleware technology giants, viz, Oracle, IBM and SAG. With so many open source and proprietary solutions available in the market, it is not unusual for solution architects to veer away from the basic needs of their EA landscape. This article provides a single point of reference for all critical components of a good and comprehensive SOA suite. It also compares the applicability of each tool, along with the pros and cons of using the entire suite in any EA landscape. The... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I67/1012-2#When:10.25.12 Arcitura Education has published advance and exclusive content on three new resource sites dedicated to Cloud Computing, Service-Orientation and REST. These sites are for open public usage and are also used as educational resource for select courses from the Cloud Certified Professional (CCP) and SOA Certified Professional (SOACP) programs. Specifically, WhatIsCloud.com provides advance content from the CCP Cloud Computing: Concepts & Technology supplement, which is forming the basis of the upcoming book by the same title as part of the Prentice Hall... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com It finally materialized, hovering above us in the sky and growing larger, day-by-day. The first beta draft of the cloud computing design patterns catalog has been published at CloudPatterns.org, a community site modeled after the popular SOAPatterns.org site that was published several years ago. This initial version of the master catalog is comprised of over 50 patterns, most of which capture and modularize technology-centric solutions distinct or relevant to modern-day cloud computing platforms and business-centric cloud technology architectures. Part of this catalog is comprised of compound patterns that tackle contemporary cloud delivery and deployment models (such as public cloud, IaaS, etc.) and decompose them into sets of co-existent patterns that establish core and optional feature sets provided by these environments... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:9.20.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I66/0912-1 Not "one size fits all". A common misconception in cloud computing is the ability to use select and go IT services at will as if they are Lego bricks that plug together like a model set of processes. Nothing could be further from the truth in practice. From a consumer perspective, a cloud may involve this user experience of self-service usability on-demand, and the purchasing contracts, terms and conditions may define and constrain the use of these services. But from the provider perspective, the technical service architecture that enables... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I66/0912-1#When:9.20.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I66/0912-2 Cloud-based solutions are increasingly gaining traction, although technical, regulatory and attitudinal reasons are preventing many systems from transitioning to the cloud. Combining existing on-premise solutions with cloud-based components will increase flexibility and reach, while improving reliability and security. This article explores hybrid cloud scenarios that combine cloud with traditional delivery methods; these include cloud-based front-ends, secure service tunneling, elastic computing and cloud-based disaster recovery. Cloud... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I66/0912-2#When:9.20.12 http://www.youtube.com/arcitura Shared services are high-value IT assets that now have the potential to reap greater long-term returns by taking advantage of the vast resources offered by cloud platforms. They can be more robust, scalable, and more rapidly configurable and therefore can directly realize concrete levels of organizational agility in support of business automation goals. Charting a strategic path for shared services requires establishing governance controls as early on as the modeling stage and, from thereon, never looking back. By referencing techniques from the acclaimed book "SOA Governance", this session highlights some of the key considerations pertaining to the governance of shared and reusable services with an emphasis of how governance approaches can differ with the utilization of cloud computing. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I66/0912-1#When:9.20.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I66/0912-3 This is the second article in a two-part article series. Read the first part of this article here. In some cases, as the consumer requirements shift towards more complex functionality, they cannot be fulfilled by a simple atomic service. This shortcoming can be handled by service composition, that is the appropriate combination of certain atomic services in order to achieve a complex goal... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I66/0912-3#When:9.20.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I66/0912-4 This is the second article in a two-part series that discusses how in the future, the EAI features of Azure Service Bus will offer the transformation and routing of messages to integrated systems on a pay-per-use basis while maintaining its usual high availability. Moreover, standards like EDIFACT and X12 will also be supported in the same way as the integration into local systems via relaying. To read the first part of this article series, click here (link). To enrich data in a bridge, actions which extract values from the message... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I66/0912-4#When:9.20.12 http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/podcasts2012.php A series of podcasts, brought to you by Arcitura Education, SOASchool.com and CloudSchool.com in co-operation with the International Service Technology Symposium Conference Series, and the Prentice Hall Service Technology Series from Thomas Erl. This month features: Steve Graham, Matthias Ziegler, Maarten Balliauw, Dan Rosanova, Corey Scobie, Ignaz Wanders, Dennis Wisnosky, Tony Crecenzo, Masykur Marhendra, Hans Tesselaar, Shekhar Kulkarni, and Ahmed Aamer. SOA http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/podcasts2012.php#When:9.20.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com As we near this year's Service Technology Symposium in London, we will be incrementally releasing cloud computing design patterns at the new CloudPatterns.org community site. Around sixty patterns will be published at a rate of approximately three per working day, over the next five weeks. This leads up to the formal announcement of the cloud computing design patterns catalog by myself and Amin Naserpour of HP during our talk on the first conference day. These patterns will form the basis of an upcoming book creatively entitled "Cloud Computing Design Patterns" that I hope to have in print by early 2013. We're aiming to have about 100 copies of the preliminary manuscript... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:8.20.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I65/0812-1 This is the first article in a two-part series that discusses how in the future, the EAI features of Azure Service Bus will offer the transformation and routing of messages to integrated systems on a pay-per-use basis while maintaining its usual high availability. Moreover, standards like EDIFACT and X12 will also be supported in the same way as the integration into local systems via relaying. System integration solutions are a single point of failure and, as such, must be designed to be fail-save. This... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I65/0812-1#When:8.20.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I65/0812-2 Some consider cloud computing to be a cure-all for virtually any type of IT infrastructure. And while the cloud certainly delivers on many of its promises, it will never truly provide all that it's capable of unless it's optimized for integration with other applications and evolution for new requirements. What is the best way to provide this? Use a services-oriented architecture (SOA) as the fabric upon which to build your cloud-based applications. In this article, we'll outline the reasons... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I65/0812-2#When:8.20.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I65/0812-3 In the telecommunication industry, the ability of business domain Order Provisioning to invoke services dynamically at runtime is one of the critical requirements . The Service Broker as a controller is the main means of composing agnostic services dynamically. Composed services, together with other related enterprise artifacts, must be successfully discovered and exposed in various ways, which are clearly... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I65/0812-1#When:8.20.12 http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/podcasts2012.php A series of podcasts, brought to you by Arcitura Education, SOASchool.com and CloudSchool.com in co-operation with the International Service Technology Symposium Conference Series, and the Prentice Hall Service Technology Series from Thomas Erl. This month features: Volker Stiehl, Jügen Kress, Mark Skilton, Sergey Popov, Vijay Srinivasan, and Olaf Heimburger. SOA http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/podcasts2012.php#When:8.20.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com This two-part article series discusses how creating and maintaining service based architectures can be a significant challenge and a considerable investment. IT staff must carry out all of the tasks associated with the discovery, composition and invocation of services. Coping with millions of services, solely through human effort isn't feasible (and I'm not even taking environmental and context changes into account). However, there should be an approach to drive traditional service-oriented... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:7.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I64/0712-1 This article helps understand how a service driven enterprise portal design with SharePoint as the front-end and Microsoft's SOA based integration middleware underneath enables the use of composite services to help build more efficient, scalable and supportable central workspaces that can be used in modern BYOD environments. Microsoft's SharePoint is a pretty dominant collaboration platform, serving more than 70% of enterprises world-wide. Besides enabling more efficient sharing of documents, improving... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I64/0712-1#When:7.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I64/0712-2 Business Process Management (BPM) is complex, expensive, and often fails! If you agree (in the year of 2012+), then you should read the following rules to do BPM correctly in your next project. This article does not give an introduction to BPM. It starts with a use case immediately to show best practices and common miscues regarding BPM. If you are not familiar with BPM, BPMN, WS-BPEL or related topics, then you should begin with a BPM introduction [REF-1]. Figure 1 shows a stateful... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I64/0712-2#When:7.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I64/0712-3 Apache CXF is a Web services and REST framework designed in a very extensible and flexible way. One very important aspect of the CXF framework is the ability of transports. Transports are responsible for physical communication between clients and services. This article, broken into two parts, describes how transports are organized in CXF. The first part gives a general overview of the architecture and design of the CXF transport layer... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I64/0712-1#When:7.26.12 http://servicetechbooks.com/rest Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut lab... SOA http://servicetechbooks.com/rest#When:7.26.12 http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/podcasts2012.php A series of podcasts, brought to you by Arcitura Education, SOASchool.com and CloudSchool.com in co-operation with the International Service Technology Symposium Conference Series, and the Prentice Hall Service Technology Series from Thomas Erl. This month features: Gijs in 't Veld, Chris Haddad, and Howard Cohen. SOA http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/podcasts2012.php#When:7.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com One interesting topic area that will be addressed in scheduled expert panels being held by Anne Thomas Manes (of Gartner) and Joe McKendrick (of ZDNet and Forbes) at this year's symposium in London is how the changing service technology landscape affects IT professionals from a career perspective. Anne's panel is about how the convergence of cloud, mobile, social media, and information points impact the average IT worker's career focus (in relation to both skill-set and communication), especially for those relying on contract work. Joe's talk about "Cloudpreneurs" is more focused on how the cloud has opened up new opportunities for those wanting to start up new ventures. Career advice from technology thought leaders... should be good. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:6.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I63/0612-1 Everyone is talking about cloud computing but a great deal of writing is spent on the advantages of the technology. Moving services off premise can create a great deal of savings but there are risks that should be considered. Most of the risks are associated with the... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I63/0612-1#When:6.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I63/0612-2 This paper documents technical work conducted for the Electronic System Center (ESC) at Hanscom AFB, to create a description of the minimal requirements for a web service security infrastructure. The intent is for the infrastructure to be used by programs and projects that are moving towards distributed service architecture. To achieve this and make the results applicable to a wide array of programs, we analyzed the technical requirements of a... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I63/0612-2#When:6.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I63/0612-3 Apache CXF is a Web services and REST framework designed in a very extensible and flexible way. One very important aspect of the CXF framework is the ability of transports. Transports are responsible for physical communication between clients and services. This article, broken into two parts, describes how transports are organized in CXF. The first part gives a general overview of the architecture and design of the CXF transport layer... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I63/0612-1#When:6.26.12 http://youtu.be/FYilDCRln8c The consequences of building silo-based and single-purpose applications have been well documented. As IT enterprises accumulate an ever-growing collection of disparate systems, the need to resort to fragile integration architectures results in convoluted environments that become increasingly burdensome and risky to evolve. Service-oriented architecture provides a direct alternative to this approach by establishing a method for the design... SOA http://youtu.be/FYilDCRln8c#When:6.26.12 http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/podcasts2012.php A series of podcasts, brought to you by Arcitura Education, SOASchool.com and CloudSchool.com in co-operation with the International Service Technology Symposium Conference Series, and the Prentice Hall Service Technology Series from Thomas Erl. This month features: Roger Stoffers, Johan Kumps, Andries Inze, Nils Preusker, Axel Angeli, and Jaap Schekkerman. SOA http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/podcasts2012.php#When:6.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com With the introduction of a dedicated Big Data conference track to the program agenda for the upcoming SOA, Cloud + Service Technology Symposium in London, we will also be looking forward to expanding the scope of coverage with the Service Technology Magazine to encompass topics related to Big Data and how its platforms can be built upon and combined with SOA models and cloud computing technologies. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:5.24.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I62/0512-1 Consistency patterns are solutions to the problem that a system must represent views and logic on consistent underlying data, but that that same data, while in the process of being changed, can temporarily be inconsistent.Most of us know that ACID and BASE are 'opposites', at least in the chemical world. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I62/0512-2#When:5.24.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I62/0512-2 Enterprise architecture (EA) is a strategic approach of defining an effective IT strategy and roadmap that drives the IT to meet the business vision and strategy. However, it is mandatory for enterprise architecture to have existing business architecture and IT architecture for preparation; it can be used to identify the gap in order to make strategic decisions and directions. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business Process management (BPM) architecture models will help an enterprise to realize the enterprise architecture strategy and roadmap. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I62/0512-2#When:5.24.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I62/0512-3 Over the past decade IT systems have grown in the variety of solutions, platforms, frameworks and implementation approach options available to organizations. This growth points to greater heterogeneity across and increased complexity within these systems. Coupling this with the drive to organize, reduce costs and gain efficiencies creates a need for a proven methodology towards tackling both the complexity and the discipline necessary to successfully achieve a mature first-class IT organization. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I62/0512-1#When:5.24.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com Design principles and design patterns are formalized practices that have already been well-defined and proven as effective and successful in the real world. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:4.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I61/0412-1 Over the past decade IT systems have grown in the variety of solutions, platforms, frameworks and implementation approach options available to organizations. This growth points to greater heterogeneity across and increased complexity within these systems. Coupling this with the drive to organize, reduce costs and gain efficiencies creates a need for a proven methodology towards tackling both the complexity and the discipline necessary to successfully achieve a mature first-class IT organization. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I61/0412-1#When:4.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I61/0412-2 This article compares centralized and decentralized application security models. It focuses on technical costs and organizational considerations while comparing these models. The analysis shows that centralized management of security policies has significant advantages over decentralized application security deployments including cost reduction, better risk mitigation and greater freedom for application developers to focus on creating business value. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I61/0412-2#When:4.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I61/0412-3 This article, adapted for the Service Technology Magazine from the Spring Web Services 2 Cookbook, covers integration testing using Spring-JUnit support, server-side integration testing using MockWebServiceClient, client-side integration testing using MockWebServiceServer, monitoring TCP messages of a Web Service using TCPMon, and monitoring and load/functional testing a Web Service using soapUI. New software development strategies require comprehensive testing in order to achieve the quality in the software development process. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I61/0412-3#When:4.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I61/0412-4 This article is geared to help CIOs, IT managers and architects understand: when to use BizTalk Server, SQL Server, Windows Server AppFabri; when to use Azure Service Bus; when to use hybrid integration architecture; the Federated Enterprise Service Bus (ESB); integration of PaaS and SaaS applications; and how to design future proof integration patterns. Integration is key in a best-of-breed application landscape, B2B (business-to-business) scenarios or service-oriented architecture (SOA). SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I61/0412-4#When:4.26.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com Design principles and design patterns are formalized practices that have already been well-defined and proven as effective and successful in the real world. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:2.25.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I59/0212-1 This two-part article series discusses real-world challenges of applying service-oriented principles and patterns. Informed by case studies of SOA wins and losses, this article contrasts the SOA ideal to its realization and suggests that strong leadership must drive a successful SOA. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I59/0212-1#When:2.25.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I59/0212-2 In this article we'll conduct a deep analysis on a number of topics in virtualized cloud data centers providing analytical tools for readers interested in architecting solutions related to their present environment. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I59/0212-2#When:2.25.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I59/0212-3 This article describes the foundations of SOA security testing including functional, performance, interoperability, and vulnerability testing. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I59/0212-3#When:2.25.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I59/0212-4 In today's IT world, service-oriented architecture is not a new term for enterprises. It has been adopted widely and quickly by many. However, most SOA adoptions focus only on the pilot phase and production implementation to meet immediate business needs. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I59/0212-4#When:2.25.12 http://www.servicetechmag.com For those of you following the Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing book series, I'd like to take this year-end editorial as an opportunity to provide some updates. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:12.14.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I57/1211-1 SOA governance initiatives help organizations optimize their service-oriented architecture (SOA) by providing a means to reduce risk, maintain business alignment and show the business value of SOA investments. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I57/1211-1#When:12.14.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I57/1211-2 The enterprise service technology architect faces three challenges. The architect must model complicated existing systems and new service technology architectures (STA), promote STA to stake holders throughout the enterprise who vary widely in engagement, commitment, and knowledge, and realize the vision of that STA. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I57/1211-2#When:12.14.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I57/1211-3 An extension to complexity science has implications to our theory of computing, and to service computing. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I57/1211-3#When:12.14.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I57/1211-4 Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural model that aims to meet the goals of service-orientation. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I57/1211-4#When:12.14.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com In this month's issue, Robert Laird from IBM points out the importance of identifying organizational roles when it comes to assigning responsibilities to project team members. Role assignment was something more commonly and readily performed during early SOA adoption projects, primarily because the cross-project stage reach and diverse skill set requirements of SOA initiatives were clearly evident. With cloud computing, though, it is not as common. Not yet, anyway. There will be project managers that will look to add a cloud computing "expert" to a team or will perhaps send some of the existing team members to get trained "in cloud computing". However, this perspective is extremely limiting and potentially risky. The cloud computing industry has grown to an extent that areas of specialization of established themselves as professions in their own right. For example, whereas a Cloud Technology Professional is someone who has mastered the use and application of cloud technologies, a Cloud Governance Specialist is trained to create and maintain regulatory controls and processes geared to the evolution of those technology environments. Without proper governance, investments made in cloud-based IT resources will not reach their potential. Understanding in advance the importance of equipping key project team members with skill-sets appropriate to their roles and responsibilities helps ensure oversights, especially in the planning stages, that can lead to significant loss and regrets down the line. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:11.17.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I56/1111-1 The latest IT phenomenon, cloud computing, continues to grow in importance. Public cloud infrastructure services provide a convenient and cost-effective way for companies to obtain new capacity cheaply and to cover peaks in their processing needs. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I56/1111-1#When:11.17.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I56/1111-2 Cloud computing has been an evolution of the internet and network, virtualization, utility computing, and yes, Service-oriented architecture (SOA). SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I56/1011-2#When:11.17.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I56/1111-3 Nowadays agility processes and agile architectures are critical success factors for many companies whose business is driven and determined by continuous changes. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I56/1111-3#When:11.17.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I56/1111-4 Most skepticism about adopting clouds relates to quality of service concerns, especially security, performance, and availability. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I56/1111-4#When:11.17.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com Starting this month, we'll be making entire issues of the Service Technology Magazine available for download as PDFs. This is something we've added in response to many requests, especially from universities, for the articles and papers submitted by authors to be distributable as part of complete files and within the context of individual issues. If you're a long-time reader of the SOA Magazine and the series of Service Technology Magazine issues that have been released this year, I'd appreciate any feedback you may have regarding the new Download PDF feature and its contents. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:10.13.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I55/1011-1 Clouds in nature are both the wonder and the sorrow of humanity. White puffs drift across blue skies and streaks of neon and gold at dusk are a sight of beauty and awe. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I55/1011-1#When:10.13.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I55/1011-2 In this series of articles we examine the correspondence and synergies of service-orientation and The Open Group Architecture Framework. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I55/1011-2#When:10.13.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I55/1011-3 This article is a modest collection of excerpts from three books in the Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series, combined to provide a concise overview of what lies at the very core of the service-orientation paradigm and the service-oriented architectural model: the identification and aggregation of agnostic logic into reusable and composable units. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I55/1011-3#When:10.13.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com One of the primary focal points of the service-orientation paradigm is the design and standardization of service contracts. It becomes a concern during the early modeling stages when we conceptualize service candidates individually and in relation to each other, and then carries over into processes dedicated to the physical design of the technical interface and the underlying logic required to fulfill the functionality promised by the interface. When we study the application of principles, such as Standardized Service Contract and Service Loose Coupling, to the design of services that rely on a uniform contract (such as what can be provided by HTTP), we need to understand and appreciate how the contracts of individual service are based on overarching uniform methods in addition to whatever resources and types are accessible via these methods. We essentially end up with a baseline level of standardization that can be leveraged throughout a service inventory. We then build upon the baseline to further standardize and architecturally position the other elements unique to different service contracts. The principles continue to apply, but less so to what is expressed in technical service contract definitions, and more so to what is accessed via uniform contract methods used by the service contracts. Studying service-orientation in this context helps further highlight just how flexible this paradigm really can be. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:09.14.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I54/0911-1 Several enterprises around the world consider Information Technology (IT) as an entity separate from its core business functions. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I54/0911-1#When:09.14.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I54/0911-2 In this article, we examine the application of RUP phases, roles and practices in mitigation of risks related to SOA delivery projects and Service Inventory Analysis. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I54/0911-2#When:09.14.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I54/0911-3 Service-oriented architecture in the telecommunication industry is the first but huge step for answering many challenges from management to fulfilling product timeline from marketing request.. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I54/0911-3#When:09.14.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I54/0911-4 Services express their purpose and capabilities via their service contracts. The Standardized Service Contract design principle requires that inventory-specific standards and processes be specified by the enclosing inventory's governance board and taken into account when designing a service's contracts. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I54/0911-4#When:09.15.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com One of the topic areas covered by the upcoming SOA with REST book is how the service-orientation Service Composability design principle can be applied to REST-based solutions. Incorporating REST-style architectural characteristics within service composition architecture introduces some distinct qualities and runtime dynamics. For example, we end up with the concept of composite resources resulting from multiple REST services accumulating data as a result of the invocation of their respective resources. Other areas of interest are how the very particular approach REST has to state management carries over to managing the state of multiple services as part of more complex compositions, and how the dynamic discoverability aspect of REST ties into defining an architecture for a composition without necessarily knowing the service membership of the composition in advance. These and other issues need to be understood in order for us to fully leverage REST in support of service-orientation. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:08.10.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I53/0811-1 Telecommunication is a critical industry in any geographical area. Technology is rapidly developing, especially in voice and data services. Currently, voice services are becoming ordinary products SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I53/0811-1#When:08.10.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I53/0811-2 Once upon a time, there were three little pigs and the time came for them to leave home and seek their fortune. The first little pig built his home out of straw because it was the easiest thing SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I53/0811-2#When:08.10.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I53/0811-3 Service-orientation is an approach to distributed computing that encompasses its own design paradigm, design principles, design pattern languages, and related technologies, concepts, and frameworks. Service-orientation builds upon past distributed computing... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I53/0811-3#When:08.10.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I53/0811-4 Integration as a Service (IaaS) is all about taking the functionality of business integration (intra as well as inter-enterprise integration) and putting it into the cloud, providing for a smooth data and message transport between any enterprise application and SaaS applications in the online, on-demand, and off-premise cloud. Users subscribe to IaaS as they would do for any other SaaS application. Cloud middleware, alternatively cloud integration bus (CSB), is the next advancement of traditional... SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I53/0811-4#When:08.10.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com One of the consistent themes I encountered over the past two days at both the OMG SOA in Healthcare conference and the SOA & Semantic Web Technology Symposium has been the importance of fostering discipline and respect for standards and those with the authority to enforce them. During the closing remarks of the symposium, Dennis Wisnosky showed a clip from an old war movie to better illustrate this. In the scene, a fighter pilot panics and decides, against his orders, to descend. John Wayne the co-pilot repeatedly slaps the pilot in the face, and puts the plane back on course. I don't recall the name of the film, but the 30 second clip got lots of laughter and applause. More importantly, it helped convey that discipline is a necessity for any team to successfully achieve its goals. Regardless of whether we are working with cloud or semantic technologies, SOA provides us with formal models, principles, and patterns for positioning and leveraging these and other technologies in support of our business objectives. Applying hese parts of the methodology requires discipline, but it is really the overarching SOA governance system that defines exactly how, when, and to what extent-and-the consequences for not doing so. These consequences are what John Wayne's character so aptly demonstrated- the ability for SOA Governance Specialists (and others with authority) to reject designs, withhold funds, or otherwise "slap" those whose lack of discipline could jeopardize the goals of the team. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:07.15.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I52/0711-1 Abstract: The term "SOA Governance" has possibly become the most used phrase in the SOA community. However, through experience with the architecture community across Product vendors, SIs as well as the Customers, is that it is also the one term that has been misconstrued to mean different things by individuals taking a very silo-ed look at things. This article puts forward thoughts on the "What, Why, When and How" of SOA Governance based on experiences working at the grassroots level of organizations with a successful SOA story as well discussions with the CXO organization on how they perceive the SOA story. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I51/0611-4#When:07.15.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I52/0711-2 While the technology platform plays a significant part in SOA governance adoption, addressing organizational aspects of SOA governance is even more important. Building the correct structures, establishing the correct roles, and setting-up effective communication mechanisms are all necessary components for success. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I52/0711-2#When:07.15.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I52/0711-3 Central term, in the definition of SOA Governance, is defined as the SOA Governance Program Office (SGPO). An SOA Governance Program Office (SGPO) is an organizational entity comprised of trained SOA governance specialists, enterprise architects, and other types of IT decision makers. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I52/0711-3#When:07.15.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I52/0711-4 More companies are adopting SaaS applications, fuelled by a competitive business environment. When potential technologies emerge, companies need to adapt them so that their IT departments can deliver innovative technology solutions rapidly at a lower cost. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I51/0711-4#When:07.15.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com With this issue we introduce new branding and a broadened scope of topic areas that will be covered in issues from hereon. To reflect this increase in coverage, The SOA Magazine has been renamed to the Service Technology Magazine. Articles will of course continue to be focused on service-oriented architecture and service-orientation, but will also address topics related to service technology innovations, such as those fostered by the on-going emergence of cloud computing platforms. I'd like to invite you all to contribute your expertise as we continue to explore how this new generation of architectural models, paradigms, and technologies is changing the way we view and leverage IT. Note that the archive of over 150 articles collected over the past four and a half years of SOA Magazine issues will soon be available via the new ServiceTechMag.com Web site. In the meantime, the SOAMag.com Web site will continue to be accessible. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/#When:06.23.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I51/0611-4 Abstract: SOA's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse represent domains that can bring failure to an enterprise's SOA efforts; security, performance, change management, and testing. Governance must bridge the gap between the promise of SOA and its realization. This article provides a structure of analysis that can help address each of these four areas. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I51/0611-4#When:06.23.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I51/0611-1 We are witnessing phenomenal growth in the adoption of open and proprietary REST-based services. Enterprises are increasingly turning to them for lightweight HTTP-based distributed services and to model Service-Oriented Architectures. Such a proliferation mandates the use of policy-based governance, so that the developed artifacts coexist harmoniously with supporting automation tools. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I51/0611-1#When:06.23.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I51/0611-3 Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), the architectural style and scheme for the enterprise IT, is creating strategically significant opportunities for the worldwide IT industries as well as business organizations. SOA has impacted service providers, consulting companies and product vendors alike in planning and picking up new avenues for extra and sustainable revenues. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I51/0611-3#When:06.23.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I51/0611-2 Activities and factors related to the SOA Adoption Planning are typically examined during the Project Establishment iteration in TOGAF. This iteration consists of the Preliminary Phase and Phase A: Architecture Vision. The architectural inputs and objectives of these phases fit well with the objectives of the SOA Adoption Planning. SOA http://www.servicetechmag.com/I51/0611-2#When:06.23.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com I'm very pleased to announce that we'll be making as series of papers available that explore how the service-orientation paradigm relates to other established models, methodologies, and paradigms. This body of work will provide concrete mapping of principles, characteristics, and mechanisms between service-orientation and the service-oriented architectural model and elements of other models and frameworks, such as those provided by RUP, TOGAF, ITIL, and others. These papers are official supplements of SOA School courses, but will also be published via the SOA Magazine and other publications, including the upcoming serviceorientation.com community site that is under development. In this issue we kick things off with contributions from Filippos Santas, Prasad Jayakumar, and Jose Luiz Berg. I met with both Filippos and Jose at last month's SOA + Cloud Symposium in Brasilia, where we were able to further discuss plans for the roll-out of these important documents. The Brazil event was highly successful with our largest turnout so far. We'll be looking forward to the next symposium in Spring, 2012. SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:05.18.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I50/0511-1 In this series of articles we examine the correspondence, synergies and gaps of Service Orientation and The Open Group Architecture Framework. In this first set of articles we go through the phases, methods, iterations, layers, principles and roles. In part II of this article, we continue with governance issues. The part III of this article, we examines how services are architected and developed providing traceability to the business processes. SOA http://www.soamag.com/I50/0511-1.php#When:05.018.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I50/0511-2 World-renowned SOA expert Thomas Erl had stated the following on Service Reusability, "A service capability can be reused in two different ways. It can be repeatedly invoked by the same service consumer program automating the same business task or it can be invoked by different service consumers automating different business tasks." Based on this thought, services are generally classified into Shared Services and Internal Services. SOA http://www.soamag.com/I50/0511-2.php#When:05.018.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I50/0511-3 As previously stated, the data model in EAI deserves a separate chapter. A common mistake in systems integration is to transfer their job is requirements as the systems communicate. It is common to hear from integration teams, "they are only the pipe, and don't care about what's going on inside it". In fact, the integration concerns the exchange of information (represented by your data) between systems. This is your goal and that is what adds value to the business... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I50/0511-3.php#When:05.018.11 http://www.soamag.com All eyes will be on Brasilia later this month as speakers will converge on this historical city for the next International SOA + Cloud Symposium event. I will look forward to finally launching the SOA Governance book with several of the co-authors, and it will be interesting to see how much governance becomes a topic of discussion throughout the conference sessions. Although there is a track dedicated to SOA governance, the more general topic area of IT governance usually finds its way into a range of talks, from technology to practice to business strategy. More than in previous symposium events, this year we have seen the program agenda mix and merge sessions relating to service-oriented architecture and cloud computing. This is a positive indication that there is a growing realization of the synergy between these two fields of practice. The more awareness of this synergy, the greater we are empowered to leverage it when it makes sense to do so, and to decide not to when it doesn't. It all comes down to making educated decisions based on concrete facts. I'm hopeful this next symposium will take us all a step further in that regard. See you there. SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:04.14.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I49/0411-2 This article is intended to present the relationship between Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). Some people have recently said that EAI is dead, it was than replaced by SOA, creating some confusion and enforcing a culture of "forgeting all the past". SOA http://www.soamag.com/I49/0411-2.php#When:04.014.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I49/0411-3 Many aspects of SOA governance adoption depend on tight integration between various SOA platforms. As you can see from the governance adoption framework, the SOA governance platform plays a central role in solidifying governance mechanisms, automating governance processes, and driving governance adoption. SOA http://www.soamag.com/I49/0411-3.php#When:04.13.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I49/0411-4 SOA governance should ensure that there is an appropriate process in place by which services described by the service model become candidates to enter the Service Portfolio. SOA http://www.soamag.com/I49/0411-4.php#When:04.14.11 http://www.soamag.com While completing the manuscript for the SOA Governance: Governing Shared Services On-Premise and in the Cloud, we ran into an interesting requirement to continually make a distinction between SOA governance and cloud computing governance. The governance controls documented in the book were specific to realizing the target state of SOA - that which we strive to achieve by applying the method service-orientation in a manner that realizes our business goals. If cloud platforms are part of that target state, then we build and plan for them accordingly, but never losing sight of the fact that we are establishing service-oriented solutions and service-oriented technology architecture with very specific characteristics. However, cloud computing governance (or just "cloud governance") is distinct from this, in that it represents governance controls required to regulate and evolve any type of cloud-based IT resources and systems, regardless of whether they are service-oriented. So although there is obvious synergy between these two areas of expertise, they are also clearly independent. SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:03.09.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I48/0311-1 As governance introduces new rules, processes, and precepts, people that must comply with them often do not accept the change easily. In general, people like status quo. Change is hard. It requires people to learn new things, follow new rules, and modify their behavior. This dislike for change leads to rebellion in many forms - outright rejection, quiet noncompliance, behind the scenes subversion, or complete disregard. SOA http://www.soamag.com/I48/0311-1.php#When:03.09.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I48/0311-2 As the web is becoming more pervasive and persuasive, there is a rush to position customer-facing business applications on remote and reliable servers. This allows it to be accessed by hundreds of thousands of users simultaneously at global scale SOA http://www.soamag.com/I48/0311-2.php#When:03.09.11 http://www.servicetechmag.com/I48/0311-3 Another aspect that governance should monitor is the creation of static business models that define the information (data) that each organization uses to conduct its affairs. The techniques of data modeling are well established, and data models can be readily implemented as they translate directly to physical relational database structures. SOA http://www.soamag.com/I48/0311-3.php#When:03.09.11 http://www.soamag.com While completing the manuscript for the SOA Governance: Governing Shared Services On-Premise and in the Cloud, we ran into an interesting requirement to continually make a distinction between SOA governance and cloud computing governance. The governance controls documented in the book were specific to realizing the target state of SOA - that which we strive to achieve by applying the method service-orientation in a manner that realizes our business goals. If cloud platforms are part of that target state, then we build and plan for them accordingly, but never losing sight of the fact that we are establishing service-oriented solutions and service-oriented technology architecture with very specific characteristics. However, cloud computing governance (or just "cloud governance") is distinct from this, in that it represents governance controls required to regulate and evolve any type of cloud-based IT resources and systems, regardless of whether they are service-oriented. So although there is obvious synergy between these two areas of expertise, they are also clearly independent. SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:02.17.11 http://www.soamag.com/I47/0211-1.php No matter what type of cloud services or deployment models you are considering as part of your overall IT strategy, you must have a cloud services adoption roadmap to guide your journey. A cloud services adoption roadmap provides guidance that enables multiple projects to progress in parallel yet remain coordinated and ultimately result in a common end goal. The cloud services adoption roadmap consists of program-level efforts and a portfolio of cloud services. The program-level effort creates strategic assets such as the cloud architecture, cloud infrastructure, cloud governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) processes, and security policies that are leveraged across all the individual projects. The program-level efforts provide and enforce the necessary consistency required to succeed at cloud service adoption. A delicate balance needs to be struck between too little control and too much control. With too little control, cloud services adoption will be haphazard.... SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:2.17.11 http://www.soamag.com/I47/0211-2.php Cloud computing has been making waves in the business-enabling IT arena. Its impacts on both business and IT are definitely multifaceted and mesmerizing. Conceptually, the cloud style has inspired scores of nimbler business, delivery, consumption and pricing models. On the infrastructural side, cloud has emerged as the robust and resilient infrastructure for optimally hosting, managing, and delivering next-generation services and applications. Cloud is being positioned as the consolidated, virtualised, automated, shared, and quality of service (QoS)-compliant infrastructure. Having understood its strategically sound business and technical benefits, global enterprises are quick in embracing this disruptive and transformative IT platform. Following the footsteps of the enterprise IT, embedded IT (the device space) very positively and progressively jumps into the cloud bandwagon. There are several transnational and transformational initiatives for producing competent open architectures with frameworks..... SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:2.17.11 http://www.soamag.com/I47/0211-3.php At this stage, the conceptual services identified are at a very high level, containing little or no details of the underlying business functional requirements. SOA governance must see to it that much more analysis is performed before we can create a service model that would be of any practical benefit to the organization. Both dynamic models and static models of how the organization currently performs its 'hot' business processes are needed to define a realistic service model. Dynamic models describe business processes, activities and tasks, while static models describe the entities (collections of data) that the organization needs to record and manage. These entities are used as inputs and outputs for the tasks and processes contained in the dynamic business model..... SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:2.17.11 http://www.soamag.com/I47/0211-4.php Building upon the Portuguese-translated version of the SOA Manifesto authored by Ricardo Puttini, the Portuguese translation of the entire Annotated SOA Manifesto was just completed by IT Consultant, Eduardo Xavier. Both versions of the Manifesto were created in Portuguese and their release follows the publication of the Dutch, Spanish,Portuguese Chinese, French, and Russian translated versions of the SOA Manifesto and Annotated SOA Manifesto. SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:2.17.11 http://www.soamag.com I'm pleased to announce a new working group initiative by the APQC dedicated to establishing a new model that will be used to assess organizations' service-orientation maturity levels. The Service-Orientation Maturity Model (SOMM)will be developed throughout 2011, as part of an international collaborative effort, with numerous on-site working group sessions being planned in different countries. A number of these sessions will be carried out during the upcoming International SOA + Cloud Symposium in Brazil this April, and several of the working group members will be speaking at that event as well. We hope to be able to release a first draft of the SOMM by Fall 2011 for public review. A survey has been issued this month to collect input for the working group, as well as the SOMM Advisory Council that is being assembled as a supervisory body. I encourage you all to participate in this survey. With this model we will finally be able to evaluate maturity levels pertaining to the actual adoption of the principles and practices used to realize the method of service-orientation. SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:1.14.11 http://www.soamag.com/I46/0111-1.php Service portfolio management is the discipline whereby an organization creates and maintains the optimum set of services to support its mission of solving specific business problems and enhancing overall business agility, flexibility and operational efficiency. This article will focus on two important SOA constructs, the business service model and the service portfolio itself: Business Service Model - is an abstract representation of how an organization conducts its business operations, which describes the workings of part or all of the organization in terms of a set of business services. Business services represent functional capabilities exhibited by one part of the organization (the service provider), that provide value to other parts of the organization (service consumers). The service model is purely conceptual; it describes what the functions of the business services are, but contains no information as to how they are implemented.. SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:1.14.11 http://www.soamag.com/I46/0111-2.php Arguably computation models seen in client space are much more diverse than those in the server space proper. For servers, there are essentially two, the earlier model of static consolidation and the more recent dynamic model where virtual machines lightly bound to their physical hosts and can be moved around with relative ease. With virtualized clients there are also two main models, depending on whether the application execution takes place in servers in a data center or on the physical client. Beyond that we have identified at least seven distinct variants, each architected to address specific management, security and TCO needs and with usage models with specific business scenarios in mind. At least for server-based clients, their presence may be an indication of technology convergence between clients and server products in cloud space, a continuation of the trend that started when clients were used as presentation devices for traditional three-tier applications. This article examines some of the general issues and concerns regarding client virtualization... SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:1.14.11 http://www.soamag.com/I46/0111-3.php This interview podcast features David Chou, program committee member for the 2nd International Cloud Symposium, and architect in the Developer and Platform Evangelism organization at Microsoft. This discussion delves into David's role at Microsoft, different products that are in the works, and Microsoft's unique approach to cloud computing. Davis's co-authorship with the upcoming "SOA with Java" and the recently released "SOA with .Net and Windows Azure" books are also covered, revealing some interesting facts about both. We also get a teaser on David's presentation, "Architecting Cloudy Application". Microsoft is usually, from a cloud company perspective, delivering offerings across the entire specturm. Now windows Azure falls into the platform Azure service area and primarily is the public cloud offering. What we are doing with Windows Azure is our position on the Windows Azure is that it's really sort of the fine-tune definition of cloud computing in terms of the computing themselves. What we mean by that is cloud computing is not really just a virtualized Azure hosting... SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:1.14.11 http://www.soamag.com It's becoming common for CIOs and CTOs to link dynamic scalability to organizational agility. The rationale being that if we can create an "elastic" IT enterprise, our IT resources can scale automatically, on-demand in response to consumer usage requirements. Scalability certainly can be a factor, but it just one of several building blocks for establishing an agile enterprise. Organizational agility begins with how IT resources are initially created, both individually and in relation to each other. Partitioning logic into software programs so that each has a distinct, complementary and aligned functional boundary results in a normalized playing field that, when further underpinned by baseline layers of interoperability, enables us to combine these software programs into endless configurations. That is the foundation of organizational agility, upon which we can add scalability and elasticity as bonus layers. SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:12.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I45/1207-1.php "Am I politic?" asks the host of the Garter Inn in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor. "Am I subtle? Am I Machiavel?" Over the last four centuries, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) has been called worse things than "subtle". Machiavelli's name has become a synonym for intrigue and his most famous book The Prince has been regarded as a blueprint for amorality. Joseph Stalin had a copy of this book on his bed stand and Benito Mussolini incorporated Machiavelli's ideas into his fascist regime. On the other hand, progressives such as presidents Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt praised the Italian diplomat for his republican ideals. But the challenge of his slender volume is that it may not be what it purports to be-a manual for newcomers to power and a plea to the Medici to drive foreigners from Italy. It could be satire or a practical joke, and more than one tyrant has dug his grave on Machiavelli's bum steers. But The Prince is also bestrewn with insights... SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:12.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I45/1207-2.php A company's information assets have become more valuable over time as we continue to evolve into a knowledge-based economy. Protecting these assets has become an industry unto itself. What started as IT security -- keeping the "bad guys" out of our networks -- has become full-blown risk management as the business implications of compromised information assets have been realized. SOA magnifies risks associated with information assets by exposing those assets more readily to a broad audience. While this is beneficial to business operations, it is cause for greater concern for security and risk management professionals. It is critical that the SOA governance team partners with risk management teams to assess risks that are brought about or intensified by SOA. Organizations new to SOA may have sophisticated risk management policies and practices but often do not fully recognize the implications of SOA... SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:12.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I45/1207-3.php Many users of computer technology-and for that matter, many technology creators and administrators-complain about the rapid pace of change in information technology. The most recent example of a new technology trend bursting upon the scene is cloud computing. Setting a record for going from "what is it?" to "I've got to have it," cloud computing for many people seems to represent a revolution in how computing will be done in the future. It's important; however, to understand that despite its sudden arrival, cloud computing is actually the latest manifestation of well-established trends, each of which has brought new benefits and new challenges to those working in IT. It is Crucial to understand that cloud computing signifies a movement away from IT-centric product focus and signals a re-engagement with computing users, made possible by those long-established trends... SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:12.08.10 http://www.soa-manifesto.org/default_chinese.htm Building upon the Chinese-translated version of the SOA Manifesto authored by Tony Shan, the Chinese translation of the entire Annotated SOA Manifesto was just completed by Stockholm-based IT Consultant, Yue Yuan. Both versions of the Manifesto were created in Simplified Chinese and their release follows the publication of the Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, French, and Russian translated versions of the SOA Manifesto and Annotated SOA Manifesto. SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:12.08.10 http://www.soamag.com One of the greatest discussion points during the symposium was not related to new technology innovation (cloud-based or otherwise), but instead it was about the importance and necessity of IT governance. SOA has been responsible for highlighting the need for governance policies, processes and precepts, simply because it demands it. Among SOA practitioners it's become common knowledge that without these parts in place, any meaningful SOA initiative is doomed. However, what we are starting to see is an increasing awareness that governance is required in other parts of IT. This is because governance frameworks are not new to SOA; the concern of IT governance applies to all of IT. When we venture to establish service domains within an IT enterprise, we can have services that either encapsulate or reside alongside legacy or modern IT resources. This can result in the need for us to converge or align different types of IT governance programs, each perhaps associated with a different type of methodology. Properly defined governance programs help us take our IT enterprise through controlled evolution in on-going support of business needs. For many organizations, the adoption of SOA has turned out to be the spark to achieving this. SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:11.05.10 http://www.soamag.com/I44/1010-1.php Companies are ready to start benefitting from the third stage of commercial use of the Internet. The third stage offers a new channel for the Business Partner, and has the potential to change the competitive landscape of an industry. This stage is often called the Integration Stage. In this stage companies can take the lead by understanding and benefitting from the internet's full potential. This stage will change the internet from primarily supplying content through a homepage to primarily supplying automatic business functionality as services directly in the internal tools Business Partner's employees' use. However, many companies do not understand the potential consequence of their competitive situation and leave it to the IT-department to utilise the technology. The IT-department has kidnapped the stages external potential and has focused its potential on internal efficiency purposes, keeping it captured in the machine room. [The communications stage] is about transforming communication with customers and increasing the size of the markets you can reach. Users can go online and interact. All that is required is a browser and internet access on the user's side and a simple homepage on the company's side... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I44/1010-1.php#When:11.05.10 http://www.soamag.com/I44/1010-2.php This article features dialogues from the International SOA & Cloud Symposium podcast series. The interviews focus on cloud computing related topics, each guest offering their own unique perspective on the industry. Anthony discusses his research in cloud computing and where he sees it headed, as well as his co-authorship with the upcoming book "SOA and Cloud Computing". Naveen from TheCloudTutorial.com discusses issues such as the lack of industry standards, different definitions of cloud computing, and the educational value of vendor neutrality. Herbjorn Wilhelmsen from the Forefront Consulting Group covers a range of topics, including how cloud computing began, how it's evolved since it's first conception and where it is heading. Another important point he discusses is SOA in relation to cloud computing. Check out these cloudy discussions with the International Cloud Symposium's very own contributors... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I44/1010-2.php#When:11.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I44/1010-3.php This article features dialogues from the International SOA & Cloud Symposium podcast series. The interviews focus on cloud computing related topics, each guest offering their own unique perspective on the industry. Anthony discusses his research in cloud computing and where he sees it headed, as well as his co-authorship with the upcoming book "SOA and Cloud Computing". Naveen from TheCloudTutorial.com discusses issues such as the lack of industry standards, different definitions of cloud computing, and the educational value of vendor neutrality. Herbjorn Wilhelmsen from the Forefront Consulting Group covers a range of topics, including how cloud computing began, how it's evolved since it's first conception and where it is heading. Another important point he discusses is SOA in relation to cloud computing. Check out these cloudy discussions with the International Cloud Symposium's very own contributors... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I44/1010-3.php#When:11.08.10 http://www.soa-manifesto.org/default_russian.html Following the release of the Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, and French translated versions of the SOA Manifesto and Annotated SOA Manifesto, another version has been added to the growing list of available languages. Leonid Felikson, a Russian-speaking SOA expert, has produced fully translated versions of the SOA Manifesto and the Annotated SOA Manifesto. Leonid delivered several keynotes at the 6th International Eastern European Software Engineering Conference in Moscow discussing the importance of the SOA Manifesto to the IT community. His talks, held in Russian, referenced this newly translated version. SOA http://www.soa-manifesto.org/default_russian.html#When:11.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I43/default.php Presenting the new podcast series from the International SOA & Cloud Symposium, featuring interviews with some of the SOA Magazine's very own contributors. Art describes the evolution of the SOA & Cloud Symposium and his experience being the conference chair. The discussion delves into Art's role as a partner at Ordina, his work as a principle consultant and his upcoming books and projects. Art also talks about the conception of the SOA Manifesto, the maturity of SOA, best practices, and more. Another edition discusses BPM, BPMN, and SOA with SOA expert Volker Stiehl, a member of the solutions management team from SAP AG. Volker explains the essential distinction of BPMN from BPM, and the relationship between SOA and BPM as such. In the next interview, Stefan talks about the impact and buzz around RESTful services and SOA, his invlovement in the new "SOA with REST" book and as a committe member and speaker at this years SOA & Cloud Symposium. Stefan will be speaking on "RESTful HTTP: Using the Web for SOA" and will be participating in the "Revisiting the SOA Manifesto" and "Rest Services vs. Web Services - A Live Debate" panels... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I43/default.php#When:11.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I43/0910-2.php In general, people will entrust their personal information freely to you only if they are satisfied that you will use it with respect for them. If they suspect that you don't respect them and expect that your competitor will, it is likely that you will lose business to that competitor, particularly if doing business with you requires them to divulge personal information. And if you can't lose business because your customers have nowhere to turn, the expectation of not being respected will lead many customers to hold back information whenever they can, thereby reducing your effectiveness. Providing your customers with the experience of being respected delivers pure business value. Showing respect has, however, consequences that go wider than your business. Showing respect is a statement about the society you want to live in and about the values you hold dear. Do you want to live in a society where your privacy is respected as a matter of course? Then think further than your bottom line. The current information systems consultancy industry approach does not contain the concept 'respect'. The nearest it gets is the concept 'confidentiality', and that is not the same thing... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I43/0910-2.php#When:11.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I43/0910-3.php Instead of taking the approach of "build it and they will come" for services in your domain inventory, only build services when there is a known consumer. While planning upgrades to existing consumers, support backward compatibility using service wrappers and co-existence using versioning. Doing so will reduce the burden on service development team. Additionally, your new consumers access to the upgraded service while not breaking existing users. Providing adequate time window for co-existence will help stagger migration to a new version. Deliver business value early with service orientation by releasing high priority services during the initial part of a release. Bundle multiple enhancements to both new and existing services in the domain inventory as part of a release plan. By releasing early and often you enhance the reuse potential of services across initiatives. Iterations help build reusable services over time greatly minimizing schedule risk. Plan the scope of an iteration using a prioritized list of user stories. Based on the tasks identified, you can come up with new services needing development and updates to existing ones. Be cognizant of actual work effort... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I43/0910-3.php#When:11.08.10 http://www.soa-manifesto.com/ Instead of taking the approach of "build it and they will come" for services in your domain inventory, only build services when there is a known consumer. While planning upgrades to existing consumers, support backward compatibility using service wrappers and co-existence using versioning. Doing so will reduce the burden on service development team. Additionally, your new consumers access to the upgraded service while not breaking existing users. Providing adequate time window for co-existence will help stagger migration to a new version. Deliver business value early with service orientation by releasing high priority services during the initial part of a release. Bundle multiple enhancements to both new and existing services in the domain inventory as part of a release plan. By releasing early and often you enhance the reuse potential of services across initiatives. Iterations help build reusable services over time greatly minimizing schedule risk. Plan the scope of an iteration using a prioritized list of user stories. Based on the tasks identified, you can come up with new services needing development and updates to existing ones. Be cognizant of actual work effort... SOA http://www.soa-manifesto.com/#When:11.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I42/0810-1.php Current conceptions of what information security is all about - such as are embodied in CRAMM, the ISO 27000 family of standards and COBIT - are too systems-centric to be effective in the Internet age. The key terms - confidentiality, integrity and availability (CIA) - describe properties of systems and do not adequately address the collective business value of information security. We suggest replacing them with a service-centered approach based on the terms trust, respect and utility (TRU), in order that the security impact of the totality of our information systems can be adequately assessed and managed from a business perspective. On the 30th of April, 2009, a lone assailant attempted to crash his car into an open bus containing the Dutch royal family. The next working day, thousands of municipal workers, driven by nothing but personal curiosity, accessed the personal details of the assailant using the national citizens registry. They could see where he was born, who his parents were, whether he had ever been married, and his current and previous residential addresses... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I42/0810-1.php#When:11.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I42/0810-2.php Enterprises large and small are adopting Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in recent years in order to gain cost savings from streamlined processes as well as create opportunities for revenue generation. Unlike previous information technology (IT) initiatives SOA places business goals front and center of the adoption strategy. Pursuing SOA as a technology-only effort will result in tactical wins for the enterprise but obtaining effective business results will remain elusive. The importance of SOA being relevant to business drivers and strategies cannot be overstated. Success with SOA hinges on several key considerations such as the scope of the overall initiative, development methodology chosen, and the extent to which the effort is tailored to the enterprise's environment. There are a variety of SOA methodologies: All these methodologies provide specific techniques to identify, specify, and realize services that make up your enterprise's SOA. They provide guidance on analysis and design activities that can be used to model services (using business, service, and technology perspectives) and implement them. Additionally, they provide architectural guidance for implementing services using a layered approach that leverages existing capabilities in the enterprise... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I42/0810-2.php#When:11.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I42/0810-3.php Today's service architectures lead to services that directly talk to data sources and avoid service reuse. This can be achieved either by replicating business rules into each and every isolated service, or by reusing behavior at component level While this design is acceptable in small organizations, it suffers from complexity introduced by deployment and management of reusable components. This is the approach of most component and object oriented methodologies. Data is processed by in memory reusable objects. This design also suffers from increasing response time due to increasing processing. This shows SOA's service reuse approach which basically removes the deployment and version management issues of component oriented and object oriented approaches. However, it has a chronic and terminal illness caused by the accumulating latencies at every service reuse... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I42/0810-3.php#When:11.08.10 http://www.soa-manifesto.com/ Following the release of the Spanish and Chinese versions of the SOA Manifesto, a group of French-speaking SOA experts and IT professionals have collaborated to produce fully translated versions of the SOA Manifesto and the Annotated SOA Manifesto. This team of inter-continental translators addressed many of the nuances required for the accurate interpretation of the manifesto declaration, guiding principles, and the many annotated comments added soon after the original announcement of the SOA Manifesto last October in Rotterdam as part of the 2nd International SOA Symposium. The team was comprised of Anthony Assi from Logica, Jean-Paul De Baets from FEDICT, Yves Chaix, Florent Georges, and Mario Moreno from Logica. Several of these authors will also be speaking at the 3rd International SOA Symposium, which is occurring in Berlin and is expected to have many attendees from French-speaking countries, such as France and Belgium. The French SOA Manifesto is further being adopted overseas in other French-speaking regions, such as Quebec, Canada. SOA http://www.soa-manifesto.com/#When:11.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I41/0710-1.php In the recent times of economic instability and recession, one of the core requirements of many enterprises has been to get business agility with cost efficiency. Agility of business systems depended on how modular and well organized the systems are and how "SMART" they are. Smartness of the systems arises from being self aware of their functionality and data, which helps them to take decisions with minimal human intervention at runtime. One core requirement is the ability to understand data (of any kind, not necessarily only business data) and its relationship, in a flexible/dynamic manner. The science and technology of Semantics will enable systems to address this requirement. Semantics and the underlining science of ontology have existed for a quite a few years now and have been studied widely in research areas. Though ontologies in various fields like biomedical sciences have been explored in depth, their application to industry has been slow due to the evolution of standards and adoption by vendors and the willingness of the industry/enterprises to understand its relevance and adopt it... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I41/0710-1.php#When:11.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I41/0710-2.php As organizations continually build their software integration architecture based on the SOA paradigm, more and more services are being developed and reused to build other services. Just as OOD and CBD paradigms introduced code reuse in applications and component reuse across applications, SOA has brought the advantage of enabling reuse across distributed applications and platforms with flexibility and agility. However, as systematic reuse of such services become more and more widespread, performance is becoming a real concern; Latencies introduced at each back-end call are accumulated, large units of work hinder utilization of parallelism, chained service calls cause large amounts of wasted resources deteriorating scalability. SOA has to address these problems to advance to the next level of maturity. This article analyzes some of the important bottlenecks and proposes a new approach for rethinking and redesigning existing services to use a stream-oriented... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I41/0710-2.php#When:11.08.10 http://www.soamag.com/I41/0710-3.php Many service-oriented architecture efforts today are focusing on implementing synchronous request-response interaction patterns (sometimes using asynchronous message delivery) to connect remote processes in distributed systems. While this approach works for highly centralized environments, and can create loose coupling for distributed software components at a technical level, it tends to create tight coupling and added dependencies for business processes at a functional level. Furthermore, in the migration towards real-time enterprises, which are also constantly connected and always available on the Web, organizations are encountering more diverse business scenarios and discovering needs for alternative design patterns in addition to synchronous request-driven SOA... SOA http://www.soamag.com/I41/0710-3.php#When:11.08.10 http://www.soa-manifesto.com/ Since it was originally announced at the 2nd Annual SOA Symposium in Rotterdam last year, the SOA Manifesto has been signed by over 700 IT professionals from over 30 countries. Its success has been attributed to its simplicity and conciseness in establishing the values and priorities that underlie service-oriented architecture and in making a clear and explicit distinction between SOA as a form of technology architecture and service orientation as a design paradigm. The wide-spread adoption of the SOA Manifesto has resulted in the need for it to be translated into different languages. Most recently, Yves Chaix and Ivan Alfonso Guarin V have successfully collaborated with Sandra Milena Baron N. and Angel Maria Guarin M. to produce Spanish versions of the original SOA Manifesto and the Annotated SOA Manifesto. SOA http://www.soa-manifesto.com/#When:11.08.10 http://www.soamag.com I'd like to encourage those of you in the social media space to visit the Official Facebook Group for the Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series. As most of you know, the original site mysteriously disappeared a few weeks ago, along with a rather large membership. The newly rebuilt site is being supported by Prentice Hall and SOA School with regular book and SOACP self-study kit giveaway contests. I'd also like to congratulate Brian Loesgen, John deVadoss and Christoph Schittko for a successful launch of the "SOA with .NET & Windows Azure" book at last week's TechEd conference in New Orleans (he TechEd bookstore reported that the title remained on their top-seller list during the event). The next book planned for release is "SOA Governance", set to be launched at the upcoming 3rd International SOA Symposium. SOA http://www.soamag.com/default.php#When:10.03.10 http://soamag.com/I40/0610-1.php Measuring the performance of any initiative is imperative for its success. "If you don't measure it, you won't improve it" is something that we've found to continually be true. In the past few years, the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has become an accepted architectural paradigm, but SOA metrics have not kept up. While, some organizations have had success utilizing SOA, this has typically been in spite of lack of SOA metrics, not because of it. Organizations often struggle in translating technology value of an initiative into business value that the business organization can really understand. Though SOA is supposed to help in technology connecting with the business, there is very minimal prescriptive literature and framework that can guide us in terms of aligning the business and IT. This article looks at utilizing a strategic performance management tool. A "Balanced Scorecard" is a concept that has been around for some time, used for measuring the overall impact of an initiative or department (for example, an "IT Balanced Scorecard"). Extending this concept to SOA makes sense and will be useful for measuring the performance of SOA. Instead of looking at which specific business initiatives SOA can support to drive the revenue numbers, this article looks at SOA itself as a business and should help you to initiate the creation of a Balanced Scorecard for SOA... SOA http://soamag.com/I40/0610-1.php#When:10.03.10 http://soamag.com/I40/0610-2.php Effective governance is a critical element in fostering a successful SOA initiative. SOA promises to deliver a number of important business benefits, including faster time-to-market, lower costs, better consistency, and increased agility. But with great benefits come high risks. SOA requires fundamental changes to the planning, development, and operation of application systems, and it requires new levels of collaboration among project teams within the IT department and across lines of business. In fact, current IT practices, which typically focus on individual projects, time-to-market, and cost containment, frequently discourage SOA adoption. SOA governance helps the organization succeed with SOA by mitigating these risks through established rules, processes, and decision-making authority. A SOA governance program helps people do things according to the organization's goals and best practices. An effective governance program empowers people to handle ambiguity, balance short- and long-range goals, and reduce conflict within the organization. This following article (an excerpt from the upcoming book "SOA Governance" as part of the Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl) provides an introduction to governance, explains how it works, and differentiates it from management. You will find this content useful if you have not been involved in establishing a governance program before or if you would like to gain another perspective on the mechanics of governance... SOA http://soamag.com/I40/0610-2.php#When:10.03.10 http://soamag.com/I40/0610-3.php To their detriment many service-oriented architecture efforts tend to prioritize and focus on the technology connectivity (such as SOAP, HTTP, and WS-*), between and across services, over the business connectivity (such as, the task of exchanging and communicating business concepts and entities and their semantics). The ability to harmonize business entities and concepts across multiple services is critical to successful service composition. How does this manifest itself? Let us once again consider the self-service application scenario; but this time, let us consider a customer scenario in a large bank. The customer service representatives require a single view of the customer in order to enable superior customer service, to enable better decision making and to enhance the relationship with the customer, both to retain existing customers as well as to acquire new ones. The challenge with building a service-oriented architecture to support these requirements is that often there is no single store of customer data in the bank; and, the customer data is fragmented across multiple legacy business systems. In the real world there is often no single identifier for the customer data - the bank may have built some applications in-house, such as it may have acquired some other applications off-the-shelf and some services have been brought on-board as part of recent mergers with other smaller banks. Combining data to provide a single view of the customer is hard enough, but without a common identifier it is that much harder... SOA http://soamag.com/I40/0610-3.php#When:10.03.10 http://soamag.com/I38/0410-1.php As with politics and religion, information technology has its armies that fight for great truths in the name of half-truths. And one great half truth is that Agile and SOA are incompatible. On the face of it, that seems true. Service-oriented architecture must be top-down in conception and execution for it to be effective. Agile is a bottom-up systems development methodology that emerges from self-organizing collectives. SOA and Agile have both demonstrated their value and have firmly established themselves in the marketplace. And yet the experience of more than a decade at many hundreds of firms has exposed flaws in how SOA and Agile are practiced in the real world where vast resources are at stake. The purpose of this article is to reconcile these two paradigms into a complementary partnership... SOA http://soamag.com/I38/0410-1.php#When:10.03.10 http://soamag.com/I38/0410-2.php Whenever a service composes another service, meaning that one service uses the capabilities of another service or services to perform its own tasks, usually by means of workflow technologies, autonomy will be affected. In other words, when your service directly depends on one or more services the level of freedom and control you have in developing the service will be limited. The level of control over different runtime characteristics may also be affected. If you make synchronous calls to another service you will affect the control over runtime resources, such as threads. If you need to wait for the response of another service before you can return a response from your service, you depend on that other service in terms of response times. That translates into reduced predictability of how your service performs. To make matters more challenging, response times are often regulated by SLAs... SOA http://soamag.com/I38/0410-2.php#When:10.03.10 http://soamag.com/I38/0410-3.php XML appliances are a type of SOA intermediary that typically comes in hardware form factor and addresses the security threats associated with modern XML architectures. They are primarily geared towards security enforcement, monitoring and transformation. More recently, XML appliances also made inroads into the area of SOA management and governance. XML appliances contain hardened chips that can process XML in specialized circuits, at "wire-speeds". This yields high throughput and low latency, which are relevant criteria for deployment at the network perimeter. Many SOA security issues and XML-specific threats can be detected very efficiently by XML appliances. They allow turn-key deployment because of the hardware form factor... SOA http://soamag.com/I38/0410-3.php#When:10.03.10 http://soamag.com/I39/0510-1.php The mantra of every customer-facing business in this planet is to do more with less. This notion has drawn considerable attention these days due to the pervasive economic slump. Worldwide enterprises down with sluggish economy are hence keenly looking out for trend-setting inventions, innovations and non-linear methods in order to be competitively ahead in their service and solution offerings. Executives are seeking out novel and nimbler business, pricing and delivery models. Technical managers and architects are on their toes in order to unearth unconventional development approaches for faster software realization, integration, and modernization. Professionals and pundits are coming out with cutting-edge technologies, simplifying patterns, enabling architectures, and facilitating frameworks... SOA http://soamag.com/I39/0510-1.php#When:10.03.10 http://soamag.com/I39/0510-2.php Services often enforce a trust boundary. A service typically does not trust another external service and will do its own due diligence with respect to granting access and execution privileges to service requests. Incoming messages will be inspected; fields will be validated; identity will be authenticated, and entitlements will be validated prior to allowing incoming service requests to be processed. There is typically a workflow of tasks that is prescribed prior to fulfilling external service requests, comprised of authentication (validating the identity of the incoming service request), authorization (validating the right to access resources and business functions), and auditing (recording and tracking who did what and when). In this context, dealing with trust and identity across multiple services is essential and commonly a pre-requisite to enabling service composition in the real world... SOA http://soamag.com/I39/0510-2.php#When:10.03.10 http://soamag.com/I39/0510-3.php System building is a search for truth, and SOAG is no exception. We must establish SOAG on a foundation of sound epistemology. SOAG must be above all a rational process, a process that binds us to principles of empirical adequacy and rational coherency without respect to what I believe or to what the team believes. Empirical adequacy requires that the concept under question be amendable to empirical verification and asks the question: does it meet the evidence? Rational coherency requires that the concept should be consistent with other concepts that were arrived at rationally. It asks the question: is it consistent within itself? SOAG asks us to think for ourselves. But, in contrast to Agile, SOAG makes the radical claim that we should not think for ourselves. "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copybooks and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing," writes Alfred North Whitehead. "The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations that we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle-they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses and must only be made at decisive moments."... SOA http://soamag.com/I39/0510-3.php#When:10.03.10