Patrick Flanders is the editor of the Architecture and SOA & Web services zones on developerWorks. He is also the host of the WebSphere Techincal Podcast series.

SOA is gettin' all fancy

SearchSOA.com blogger Michael Meehan writes about our upcoming IMPACT event:

Say what you will about the imperial excess IBM has planned for the MGM Grand in Las Vegas next month, but Big Blue is not the type to throw around its cash like a young rapper with a hit record. IBM’s always been a buttoned-down operation. It’s not shelling out for Hollywood A-list comedians and multi-platinum selling bands on a whim. Rest assured, the only reason it’s writing the fat check for this event is because it’s making a fatter pile of money on its SOA business.

I can't comment about any piles of money that IBM may or may not be making, but I like Meehan's suggestion that SOA has arrived. Because it really has. People used to have a quizzical look on their faces when SOA was discussed, then they feigned a "yes, I know what you're talking about" look. Now they just want to know more because SOA is happening where they work and they want to be part of it. I remember being at an Open Group conference about three years ago in Houston. In August. That alone should give you an indication of where SOA was on peoples' radars. But the group was small, yet very enthusiastic. They all felt like outliers, too. Now, those people are probably leading architecture efforts within their companies.

Will Web 2.0 kill the big, ugly enterprise app star?

IBM'er Rick Robinson is in the process of publishing a four-part series on Web 2.0 meets SOA...it's titled, Enterprise Web 2.0. As someone who spent the first part of 2007 mumbling about those kids and their Web 2.0, not-very-fancy-pancy-user-interfaces, drinking-too-much-coffee, wearing-those-crazy-ironic-shirts, stupid-myspace-secondlife, and so forth, I think I may be coming around. And part of that reason is realizing, and actually seeing first-hand, how the concept of Web 2.0 has the potential to lead to greater efficiency, especially in a corporate environment. It's impressive what Rick has been able to give insight to, and I invite you to check it out. The series is outlined thusly:

• Part 1 examines the business and technical drivers behind Web 2.0, the challenges and opportunities Web 2.0 presents to enterprises, and the relationship between Web 2.0 and SOA.
• Part 2 covers the major solution types emerging through which enterprises can exploit Web 2.0.
• Part 3 presents a collection of industry and business scenarios in which those solutions can be deployed, and explains the value that can be realised by doing so.
• Part 4 is a more technical article focusing on the options for exposing the content and functions of core information and transaction systems such as IBM® CICS®, IBM Information Management System (IMS)™ and IBM DB2® in Web 2.0 solutions.

Eoin Lane's commute is software development

Eoin Lane is one of our more prolific authors in the SOA & Web services zone. His series, Building SOA applications with reusable assets provides a wonderful overview of some of the more basic elements of what a services-oriented architecture really is, although Eoin and his fellow authors take great pain to completely describe both the nuances and the realities of what embarking on such a task entails. In his latest blog post he describes his morning commute...and how it requires context...and that context is akin to the mindset of a developer:

As a Software developer or a consultant on an engagement I am again in a certain context. The context is now given by the scope of the project and the functional and non-functional requirements for that particular project. This context can also be mapped to content to better help me do my job. For example on insurance project there may be a functional requirement around creating a claims system. Here the functional requirement can be mapped to reusable software assets such as an insurance UML model of a claim system. A nonfunctional requirement on the other hand such as a transactional claims system can maps to another type of reusable software asset such as a software pattern assets to help me made consistent architectural decisions. The question now becomes how we do automate this context to content mapping for developing software in a consistency manner to allow better consumabitity of reusable asset such as models and patterns?

SOA Design Patterns Community Review - call for participation

New e-book: Exploring IBM SOA Technology & Practice

The prolific Bobby Woolf has just published, Exploring IBM SOA Technology & Practice, an e-book about IBM's approach to SOA. It's complete with detailed information about methods, architecture and products, and includes these main topics:

• Getting started with SOA -- including goals, challenges, and how to select a good project
• SOA methodologies -- including the SOA entry points
• Capabilities of an SOA application infrastructure -- including IBM's SOA reference architecture
• Products for an SOA application infrastructure -- especially the WebSphere Business Process Management products
• Development of an SOA application -- including the SOA lifecycle and SOA governance

Check it out...Bobby always has something compelling to say.

ESB-oriented architecture - the WRONG way

Bobby Woolf recently published a provocative piece titled, ESB-oriented architecture: The wrong approach to adopting SOA. In it, Bobby makes a very persuasive and effective argument for using an ESB as part of a larger SOA strategy. He says:

Clients often want to build only an ESB because that involves a technology challenge without the need for messy business requirements. Building just an ESB becomes an IT field of dreams, where IT builds an ESB and then hopes some SOA will come along and use it. Such an ESB-oriented architecture loses the benefits of SOA. It does not create business value. In fact, it incurs cost without reaping immediate benefit. And it does not align IT and the business. The better alternative to ESB-oriented architecture is SOA-oriented architecture. Do not build an ESB by itself; build it as part of an SOA, preferably one that fits the SOA Foundation architecture that IBM recommends.

I've worked with Bobby for a few years now, and I have learned that he does not make such statements without the appropriate level of understanding. As an WebSphere SOA and J2EE consultant for IBM, Bobby has spent plenty of time in the field seeing it done well and not-so-well. Because of the respect he's earned, this theme has been picked up in the IT press...in fact, Joe McKendrick from ZDNet wrote about it in his SOA column: ESBs: useless as a human appendix?. The Server Side has also picked up on this and wrote a great synopsis: ESB-Oriented Architecture: The Wrong Approach to Integration.

Overall, Bobby has picked up on a relevant and interesting thread with this. I expect to see others following suit.

Web services for integration with WebSphere Process Server

CEOs read books

The New York Times has a really interesting piece on the libraries of CEOs, C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success. In it, we get a glimpse into some of the reading habits of people like Steve Jobs, Visa founder Dee Hock, venture capitalist Michael Moritz (who was originally a journalist and editor, and then somehow, fast-forward a couple decades, was an early investor in Google...perhaps there's still hope for other struggling editors) and Nike CEO Phil Knight. One particularly interesting observation from it:

Serious leaders who are serious readers build personal libraries dedicated to how to think, not how to compete.

Building SOA Composite Business Services

Adapting Legacy Systems for SOA

Calvin Lawrence is one of my favorite IBM'ers - he's a guy who is out in the field, talking to customers about how to implement SOA. He's super-smart, but doesn't feel the need to pontificate. He communicates his expertise in a way that helps those of us who are merely chugging along without the same mental capacities to understand some lofty concepts without feeling inadequate. It's a gift. So it's for this reason that you should check out his newest piece for us: Adapting Legacy Systems for SOA:

There is no quick fix to transforming existing legacy-based systems. The journey to becoming an agile and flexible enterprise is one that must be seeded with patience. However, benefits can be realized throughout the journey, which means your company doesn't have to wait until the transformation is complete to reap the bottom-line benefits.

So, that's the gist, but you really need to read it to "get" it...there's so much more to understanding how to develop a truly services-oriented infrastructure, regardless of the baseline from which you're working...but not to worry, Calvin has made it pleasantly digestable.

Media diet

We have so much information available to us, that even to an informattion junkie like myself, I think it's about time to declare a period of fasting. I'm already down to only perusing about five Web sites per day, scanning two major periodicals, two online newspapers and about four blogs. But all I'm really doing with all that is just scanning it, hoping for one or two tidbits that will help me be smarter about business and technology, and seeking relevant topics for our editorial calendar - SOA-realted stuff. If I really want to gain something insightful, though, you need more than a cursory glance I think, and I don't know anyone who has the time to sit and read all day long - although, even as I say that, I've heard Warren Buffett say that all he does all day is read and think, and he's worth north of $50 billion. I'm not worth quite that much, but perhaps with some more sittin'-n'readin', my net worth will double and I'll actually be worth more than a second-hand sofa.

Here's what I DO read:

• - CIO Magazine
• - News.com
• - New York Times - Technology Section
• - Wall Street Journal
• - Grady's blog
• - Sandy Carter's blog
• - Irving's blog - probably the thing I most look forward to reading

What do YOU read?

Irving talks and I listen

I'm proud to be part of an organization that lists Irving Wladawsky Berger as a member...IBM and the general field of technology are fortunate that Irving uses his amazing insight and depth of knowledge on so many topics to illuminate trends and help us be thoughtful about the practice of technology adoption. His blog is an incredible read - when he commits words to it, they are almost always meaningful and noteworthy. He seems to appear everywhere, and I just found a piece by him in AlwaysOn, the online publication from Tony Perkins, formerly of Red Herring. In the piece, titled SOA, Services, and Business Architecture, he deftly explains the greater importance of arranging things in a services-based way. He uses examples outside the realm of technology and states it all so eloquently. For example:

The introduction of standard, interchangeable parts was one of the critical innovations that helped bring about the Industrial Revolution a couple of centuries ago and ushered in the concept of mass production in many different kinds of industries. Modern engineering practices - especially those used for developing complex systems or objects like airplanes, bridges and microprocessors, - are built around the concept of standard, modular components.

You're in for a treat if you think with mental models, then what Irving is saying here is worth noting. Services are more than snippets (snippets of anything). They inherently have the value to create, gene-like, larger structures and ultimately systems. If they're planned and used correctly, the systems they create can have widespread and highly valuable effects.

I'm clearly a fan...find out for yourself.

Preferred Data Source Pattern

We published a new item today - "Inside the Preferred Data Source Pattern". If you're working with a variety of information sources, and your goal is to have users retreive that data in a way that's transparent to them, then you will undoubtedly benefit from looking at this. It's written by some developerWorks stalwarts - Eoin Lane, Greg Flurry, Mei Selvage, Guenter Sauter, Kyle Brown and Jim Conallen. Their combined brainpower is something to behold.

I want to be your friend, but this ain't MySpace...

We have a new community tool at developerWorks, and I think it's going to help you not only find our stuff in a new way, but it'll allow you to organize it the way you want, and to interact with other IBM developers. These tools are called spaces and we just kicked them off...I'm handling one of them, the SOA Best Practices space...here's our official blurb on what this is all about:

developerWorks community topic spaces allow innovators in our worldwide community of five million members to create micro-sites focused on a specific technical subject, software project, development activity, or user group community. Community topic leaders can include links to their choice of articles, tutorials, blogs, forums, wikis, Web feeds, and more, from IBM, developerWorks, and external sources.

Here are a few other items that may help you get the gist of this

• See the video on what our community topics provide.
• to see the steps involved in creating a space.
• Find answers to your questions on the spaces FAQs wiki.

Let me know what you think of this idea...and tell me if we're formatting our space correctly and giving you what you need.

SCA and SDO submitted to OASIS

The SCA and SDO specs have been submitted to OASIS. The current status is, and I quote:

On March 21, 18 members of the Open SOA Collaboration finalized and published major versions of a suite of Resource Framework (RF) Specifications for a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) programming model. The following were considered:

Here's a link to the actual paper - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/specification/ws-scasdo/index.html