Service-Oriented Architecture

By Murteza Salemi

Within SOA space we have seen many definitions for what exactly SOA is, what problem it can solve and how. These varied and diversified definitions have been the main source for the confusion among both the business users and technical architects on what SOA is and how it can help. A group of smart experts and practitioners have acknowledged this issue and came together during 2009 to develop the SOA manifesto. The SOA manifesto consists of a set of core values and principles that can guide the SOA initiatives and programs on their SOA journey to make sure they do not go astray and keep them on the right path.

Continue reading "SOA Symposium reveals SOA manifesto" »

Posted by Guest Author at 04:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every web service Designer and Developer possibly have come across service naming standards or best practices in one form or the other. While I do not want to dispute the fact that standards are needed for enforcing good practices that goes a long way in software maintainability and manageability, but then trying to follow a standard without completely understanding the philosophy behind it may not produce optimal results. Now, I do not want to get into pros and cons of particular semantics of service naming either, e.g., naming conventions such as using a verb+noun pair for naming a service, using camel case etc. I will pretty much follow those widely used conventions without a debate.  I will rather try to throw some lights on the common-sense and practical factors that may make service naming less creative and more predictable. Comments and debates welcome.

Continue reading "Some thoughts on Service Naming" »

Posted by Santanu Dey at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The SCA Java EE Integration Specification has been released. It is quite an interesting read. The vision of SCA is to build composites and composite applications out of configurable, reusable service components or assets as I had tried to explain earlier. It does not intend to replace existing open standards but to build over those standards to enable a technology agnostic service component integration platform. So it has support for multiple communication protocols (or binding types), component implementation languages (implementation types) and component interface languages (interface types). The list of these types is growing. Also I had mentioned (SCDL vs WSDL) the promise to support so many technologies in a standard manner is indeed a big one! This often gives rise to skepticism in some quarters and comparison with similar looking standards such as the JBI.

Continue reading "SCA Java EE Integration Spec brings the Java world closer to SCA" »

Posted by Sudeep Mallick at 03:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Traditional portal server platforms (JSR 168 Portlets, etc.) and the new breed of enterprise mashup technologies are now providing twin ways of aggregating enterprise information and creating portal composite applications. Mashups (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-mashups.html) concentrate more on rapid and mind-blowing easy integration of multiple sources of information supplying data in multiple formats (RSS, JSON, ATOM, etc.).  The sources could also be web services. For example, Yahoo pipes (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/) provides you with easy-to-use building blocks which allows you to manipulate and filter data feeds from different sites by sequencing these blocks appropriately. It took me 30 minutes to learn what actually are Yahoo Pipes and build a simple Yahoo Pipe for retrieving RSS feeds from Sun’s SDN website with an upper limit on the number of entries (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=zGLDfJq93BGWZBrjw5tC8g). Enterprise mashups would be aggregating information from existing enterprise applications and hence the security features need to be more robust.

Continue reading "Portal Composites" »

Posted by Sudeep Mallick at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While SOA has emerged as a panacea for integration owing to the standards based interfaces to applications it advocates. The complementary trend of Web 2.0 is promising the extend the reach of SOA to newer unexplored frontiers, like client side SOA, rich service consumer ecosystems, lightweight SOA etc.

However, as of now there are very few standards in the Web 2.0 world. Will standardization be the spoilsport in creation of this extended Web 2.0 - SOA interplay?

Continue reading "SOA, Web 2.0 Interplay: Will standards be spoilsport?" »

Posted by Dr. Srinivas Padmanabhuni at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Will Component standardization be a catalyst for SOA?" »

Posted by Dr. Srinivas Padmanabhuni at 05:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some standards emerge from experiential pain, some from mere imagination, some from overly disciplined military minds and some from conventional wisdom. The above ones might have emerged from a mix of experiential pain and convention wisdom. Because ….

#1: ‘Services’ are not just Web Services; there is more to it. Especially, the concept of services is not enough to sufficiently represent and implement the functional building blocks living in the (existing) IT systems; even though, the concept of service may be enough to represent the IT requirement developed in a business mind.
 
#2: Not everybody talks the same language, so do IT systems; teaching all of them one language might take a time of a generation. So interpreters and cross language experts might need to depend on some meta-language terms and terminologies. Additionally, conversation has a time aspect associated with it; as an example, somebody might start with an opinion; he/she might change his/her stance midway, may be agreeing with somebody else’s opinion.

Continue reading "The roles of Service Component Architecture (SCA) and Service Data Objects (SDOs)" »

Posted by Binooj Purayath at 06:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Open specifications or standards make Service Oriented Integration (SOI) different from other strategies such as EAI. As usual, fortunately or unfortunately, there are many standards; standardized organizations/consortiums are trying hard to reach into consensus on SOA related standards. OASIS, WS-I and W3C are the three prominent consortiums. These standards are different stages of their maturity.

Continue reading "The bumpy road to an ‘open’ SOA : analyzing the open specifications and their state" »

Posted by Binooj Purayath at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)