Review By: John VanNorman
08/22/2007Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture explains service oriented architecture (SOA) both inside and outside an enterprise. It describes an overall architecture to lower-level design components of good enterprise SOA, as well as some related concepts like components and event-driven architecture. The book is well organized, starting with general concepts and then delving into more detail. Each chapter handles a general concept, provides the constituent pieces, and explains what they are, why they are needed, and, to some extent, how to implement them.

Overall, the book is easy to read and has sufficient diagrams. The book provides examples, sometimes allegorical, interspersed with definitions. While the implementation of some concepts is a bit complicated, the organization of the book helps lead the reader to a better understanding. One aspect of the book I found interesting is the quoting of famous people at the beginning of each chapter. I sometimes wondered why a particular quote was chosen, but after reading the chapter I went back and was able to see an oblique reference. That mechanism helps the reader gain a little more appreciation of the subject.

For me, the book is particularly relevant. My own organization is coping with enterprise SOA as a way to integrate legacy systems. As a manager of one of those legacy systems, I need to understand what makes good SOA, how my system will fit into the overall architecture, and, most importantly, what model mechanisms we are implementing so that I can help guide the development work. This book fits that need very well.

Testers also need to know the general concepts of how the software is supposed to fit within the overall architecture and design. Test cases need to be crafted to assure sufficient relevance to the operations of the software—in other words, does the software do what it is supposed to do and not what it shouldn't? The relevance to quality assurance is how SOA implements security, controls process flow, and assures the business functions are complete and accurate.

The book provides insight into SOA concepts by using non-IT-based concepts. The authors recognize the realities of building an SOA and provide compelling, long-term reasons to do it. The code examples are geared toward the more technically inclined. As someone not code competent, I found them tedious and chose to ignore them after a few tries. I did like that the authors do not incorporate a case study in the text, which would have been too much, but rather offer one as supplemental material for those who are interested.