"We didn't start the fire ... it was always burning since the world's been turning ..." [Billy Joel 1989]. Is SOA the "Same Old Architecture?" or is it "Simply Over Ambitious?" Let's apply SOA's arsenal:: XML, BPM, Services, SOAP, Web Services - to the real world and find out. Let's put out some fires.

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June 21, 2009

Is SOA Expensive: Reality and the Myth?

Industry is adopting SOA more and more. CIOs are under tremendous pressure to show the value of SOA to the Business. Business is asking more and more questions about the benefit of SOA. To Business, SOA is too expensive and does not bring enough value to business early enough (long gestation period). So CIOs are asking several questions around SOA to the technology service providers in search of a convincing answer and one question keeps getting repeated ‘Is SOA expensive – if not how and why?’

 

There is no straight answer to this question. One could argue for both sides of the camps and still make conclusion on either way. Let’s see why SOA is considered to be expensive by the people who are not so close to IT. There are several factors why SOA is perceived to be expensive (I would say only ‘to begin with’). But, remember SOA is expensive at the ‘beginning’ as there are few upfront investments required on Software Licenses, Infrastructures, Training etc. The lists below are the key areas of investments:

 

  • Service Design: Making a component re-usable is typically 2.5 times more expensive as compared to having a piece of code which wouldn’t be re-used at all having the same functionality. This means when we create a Service we have to ensure that it’s going be re-used at least 3 times in the future.

Continue reading "Is SOA Expensive: Reality and the Myth?" »

Posted by Shubhankar Sumar at 04:31 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 08, 2009

Composite Applications continues to make inroads

As I pointed out in an earlier blog http://www.infosysblogs.com/soa/2008/06/sca_java_ee_integration_spec_b.html, composite applications could also be understood as mechanism for enterprise application integration and come in various flavors basically differentiated on the tier at which the integration is taking place. JSR 168 and 286 (portlets and inter-portlet communication), enterprise mashups http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid), etc. are examples of integration happening at the presentation tier. COTS Enterprise Application (ERP, CRM, SCM, etc.) vendors such as SAP, Oracle, IBM, Mircrosoft, etc. came up with ready made composite applications and composite application development suites founded on the sound architectural principles of SOA. These represent integration at the business tier and employ process orchestration and enterprise messaging technologies.

Continue reading "Composite Applications continues to make inroads" »

Posted by Sudeep Mallick at 07:59 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 13, 2009

Are you in a hurry to implement SOA?

My experience with some of the enterprise clients in SOA space has been rather surprising. I find lots of these enterprises rushing to create a SOA roadmap and deploy a pilot SOA program. My trouble is not that they want to do it fast and want to have quick win but having it done at the cost of 'insufficient' understanding of what they want and why they want is my worry.

Continue reading "Are you in a hurry to implement SOA?" »

Posted by Rakesh Mishra at 07:35 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

December 22, 2008

SOA in difficult times

Happenings in the recent weeks have turned many tables and raised many eyebrows. It has been a crash from fantasy to reality for many organizations in the need to make IT real, effective, cheaper, faster, cleaner. Organizations are in a hurry to get unproductive assets, esp Cap-ex, off the books.

This is a big change for suite vendors who have positioned their products to “capture” the solution space by selling software in an integrated package form, wherein many aspects aren't necessarily being utilized.

This is especially true in the case of SOA, where there is no hurry and sometime no need for components like registry, repository, accelerators, test suites and the like. These components unlike the ESB and messaging components, the WSDL, workflow and rules components may or may not be implemented. However, organizations who have bought suites already use infrastructure to run, monies to license, Op-ex (train and maintain) seemingly unused software.

Continue reading "SOA in difficult times" »

Posted by Sohrab Kakalia at 08:32 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 17, 2008

Ready for the SOA Journey: Check Your SOA Maturity

One of the fundamental things about SOA that every organisation needs to understand is where they stand today before starting the SOA journey. This would quickly give an overview of the organisations readiness and maturity for the SOA journey. Organisation should start finding out the answers for few basic questions:

  • Do you have enough buy-in from Business, IT and other key stakeholders and of course the right business case to adopt SOA?

Continue reading " Ready for the SOA Journey: Check Your SOA Maturity" »

Posted by Shubhankar Sumar at 06:57 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

October 19, 2008

Logging Approach for SOA

Generally, two kinds of logging are required in any business system, be it a SOA or not
  • Technical diagnostic logging e.g. logging exception trace
  • Logging business data e.g. logging for tracking/auditing purposes
The logging requirements may vary depending on the exact purpose. For exception logging, you may typically log details of the component, application platform, timestamp, infrastructure components and then details of the incident itself etc. Logging for auditing and business related reporting purposes would invariably require some amount of business data logging.

 

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Posted by Santanu Dey at 03:04 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

September 18, 2008

SOA on its way out? Lets get ready for future

http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=1168&tag=nl.e539 (Debate Rages over SOA's cloudy future - by Joe McKendrick) 

I stumbled upon this article while reading some articles. As I read it, I heard a 'click' sound in my brain :-). My previous post of SOA's future, I speculated about fading of SOA's strongly hypothetical personality and come of age of BPM driven IT solutions.

Continue reading "SOA on its way out? Lets get ready for future" »

Posted by Rakesh Mishra at 06:29 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 31, 2008

Making Your SOA Journey Successful – Key Aspects

Adoption of SOA is growing faster and faster. But whenever an organisation adopts new approach/framework/technologies, mistakes are likely, and SOA is no exception to this rule. I have been personally involved in quite a few big SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) initiatives. Keeping the trend of mistakes, organisations and I have experienced those and tried to rectify those in the subsequent ones and thus those become part of the best practice. Even though organisation starts with a big dream of SOA with Strategy, Roadmap, Value add to business etc etc, there are number of key important best practices to be followed which have been experienced by the industry, are above and beyond just having SOA Strategy and Roadmap at the beginning. So, it's very important that the experience of the early adopters of SOA is captured for the benefit of those who are planning to adopt SOA in the near future. Identification and documentation of all those processes / policies / technology / best practices that is most essential - will help enterprises avoid mistakes and successfully implement SOA. I have captured few of the processes / best practices which must be in place for adopting SOA in an enterprise.

Continue reading "Making Your SOA Journey Successful – Key Aspects" »

Posted by Shubhankar Sumar at 01:34 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 19, 2008

Will Next generation XML Appliances propel XML and SOA into the Enterprise Mainstream?

Intel has released some new numbers, as they noted in comments to an earlier blog entry. These are some highlights:

 Decryption, Application of XACML policies, routing to different SOAP services: 1050 messages of 7.64 KB processed per second

 Legacy to SOA Integration use case: 980 messages per second for a healthcare HL7 format messages

Mediation use case: 5184 messages per second, including validation, transformation, SOAP message generation. 

What additional windows of opportunity do XML  appliances of  such speed open up?


Continue reading "Will Next generation XML Appliances propel XML and SOA into the Enterprise Mainstream?" »

Posted by Kevin Apte at 02:47 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Story of the main-stream SOA

I’m calling it a story since it is yet to happen…more ambitious word for this will be ‘vision’.  But given that ‘SOA’ and ‘vision’ have been beaten to death in last couple of years so let me continue with the story only. Key word in the title really is not the ‘story’ though..it is the ‘main-stream’ and soon you will see why. One of things in SOA that make me sick is the ‘real-ness’ of it (or rather lack of it). I personally feel that SOA as a concept is running out of steam to remain in the ‘hot seat’. There isn’t much new or different coming out from it than what has been spoken about thousands time already in difference styles and with different jargons. For that matter, I think ERP as a concept has done far better where in journey from speculative vision to physical realization (what so ever it has been, that really doesn’t matter) has been rather fast and it did change the shape of the industry to large extent. With SOA, industry seem to going on and on and on but like everything else, SOA will run out of the fuel sooner or later. If industry doesn’t something new in SOA which is the next level of life with SOA, it will not sustain. Skeptics are already ignoring it, even believers might drop the ball after a while. So what do we envision beyond this?

Continue reading "Story of the main-stream SOA" »

Posted by Rakesh Mishra at 04:42 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

August 12, 2008

Top 10 ways to Fake your way to the SOA-XML bandwagon

As a SOA Architect, I certainly do not approve this. But here are the top 10 ways you can "Fake your way to the SOA-XML bandwagon. "

In some companies SOA has been oversold, or may be premature. For example, Security and Fine Grained Entitlements are  so critical in some financial institutions, that without this piece in place, it may be premature to talk about SOA. Or may be the data still exists in silos, making it impossible to construct meaningful useful services, that address the immediate business needs of the organization.

But  if you are under pressure to be supportive of SOA and XML, here are some ways.  

 

Continue reading "Top 10 ways to Fake your way to the SOA-XML bandwagon" »

Posted by Kevin Apte at 09:02 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

August 10, 2008

Gaps in the IBM SOA Security Reference Architecture - Part III

Is it necessary to have an advanced and  mature SOA Stack in order to have centralized security policy creation and enforcement?  If a SOA Stack is not at a stage where Composite Applications are proliferating, is centralized security still required?

You need centralized security policy creation and enforcementet quite early in your SOA program. The first step in your SOA initiative will be to decide what level of granularity your services should be at. It is very easy to create webservices using built-in wizards found in many IDEs as well as wizards offered in products like databases and portals.

Continue reading "Gaps in the IBM SOA Security Reference Architecture - Part III" »

Posted by Kevin Apte at 09:14 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 08, 2008

Gaps in the IBM SOA Security Reference Architecture - Part II

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Why do we need different Architectural Building Blocks to specifically address SOA Security?  Should the best practice of “Independent Chain of Command” be part of SOA Reference Architecture?

These are some of the questions and comments, I have been asked in response to the first part of this series.  SOA Security must handle the highly composite nature of today’s and emerging SOA Applications, and this ability to handle composite, frequently changing, dynamic applications is a critical requirement for managing security in SOA environment.  

Maintaining Security Accountability in the context of   composite applications that cut across IT business unit, Enterprise Application, databases is a key challenge for SOA Security.

Continue reading "Gaps in the IBM SOA Security Reference Architecture - Part II" »

Posted by Kevin Apte at 05:28 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 04, 2008

Gaps in the IBM SOA Security Reference Architecture- Part I

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Recently,in the context of a client request, I had a chance to look at the IBM SOA Security Reference Architecture, described in this redbook. I found some critical gaps in the reference Architecture. I will highlight these gaps in this and subsequent blogs. The first gap is that the SOA Security Reference Architecture, does not consider supporting an Independent Chain of Command for managing Security Policy. The second gap is that it does not explore the use of right architectural building blocks to enable externalization of Security policies outside of applications, portals, databases, data services, service components and; Business Processes, The third gap is that it does not recommend the right set of tools with which enterprise grade SOA Security, based on the the two principles mentioned above can be implemented. With these gaps in place, demonstrating and maintaining compliance with regulations and laws will be difficult. In this blog, I will describe the concept of Independent Chain of Command in detail, I will describe the other gaps in the next two entries.

Continue reading "Gaps in the IBM SOA Security Reference Architecture- Part I" »

Posted by Kevin Apte at 09:52 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

July 15, 2008

Turbocharge your SOA Infrastructure with XML Appliances- Part III ( Some numbers from Intel )

In the last 2 blog posts, I talked about use of XML Appliances to turbocharge your SOA infrastructure. In this blog, I intend to provide some numbers provided by Intel. Most other vendors do not seem to have these numbers in a public document.  The features described here are available from many different vendors, and the other products in the space are equally good, with comparable performance numbers.

Continue reading "Turbocharge your SOA Infrastructure with XML Appliances- Part III ( Some numbers from Intel )" »

Posted by Kevin Apte at 06:39 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

June 28, 2008

TurboCharge your SOA Infrastructure with XML Appliances-Part II

In this and subsequent blogs, I  plan to discuss the advanced features of XML Appliances: Field Level Fine Grained Security, Rule Based XML validation, XML to HTML transformation, XML to WML transformation and XML to XML transformation.  In this  and subsequent blog entries, I will discuss only Fine Grain entitlements, and discuss other aspects in a subsequent blog entry. 

Continue reading "TurboCharge your SOA Infrastructure with XML Appliances-Part II" »

Posted by Kevin Apte at 06:10 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 23, 2008

Service Oriented Elephant?

SOA applicability is very dependent on an organization's environment. Recently I got into a discussion about "SOA in the small." Is it feasible? I think not. But IMHO elements of SOA can be applied to the organization to fit into an enterprise SOA roadmap

Continue reading "Service Oriented Elephant?" »

Posted by Ajit Sagar at 02:52 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 07, 2008

Turbocharge your SOA infrastructure with XML appliances-Part I

As SOA initiatives mature, the number and size of XML messages starts growing rapidly. The total XML traffic can therefore  grow exponentially. Elegant architectural design principles, such as canonical models, and model driven architecture,  require processing large XML payloads. Assuring good performance at reasonable cost, while maintaining SLAs can become challenging.  XML Appliances address this issue, and are maturing into a hardware/appliance based replacement for ESB.

Continue reading "Turbocharge your SOA infrastructure with XML appliances-Part I" »

Posted by Kevin Apte at 10:30 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

June 03, 2008

Service Oriented SOWs

Around the budgeting cycle at establshed clients, the three dreaded words "Statement of Work" loom around the corner. Why dreaded? Well, getting all the ducks in a row, tailoring the effort, resources, and cost to the ever-changing environment of the corporate world is always a big challenge. Interestingly, the basic principles of SOA can be readily applied to the preparation and publication of SOWs.

Continue reading "Service Oriented SOWs" »

Posted by Ajit Sagar at 02:40 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 28, 2008

SOA-enablement of spreadsheets - is it feasible?

SOA transformation is all very fine, but does is apply to all situations? For example, how do you apply SOA principles to organizations where the multitude of desktop users love the spreadsheet interface and swear by it? Perhaps a better question is, how should you apply SOA principles to environments where users are not looking to share information between desktops, where the ultimate flexibility of your own personal spreadsheet is inherently the differentiator between your product and your competition's, and where SOA is looked on as "Simply Over Ambitious?"

Continue reading "SOA-enablement of spreadsheets - is it feasible?" »

Posted by Ajit Sagar at 11:46 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)