An online guide to understanding SOA
My previous post on What is SOA? was inspired by the first few slides of a detailed slide deck on SOA by David Chappell.
The Wikipedia entry for SOA is a good read for a basic introduction to SOA. A brief article introducing SOA and contrasting SOAP services with REST services is also interesting. A formal definition of SOA is provided as part of the OASIS Reference Model for SOA 1.0. Another formal definition of SOA is provided by CBDI in it's article Understanding Service-Oriented Architecture which differs in some aspects from the OASIS definition. The MSDN Mag has a great article by Aaron Skonnard in the Service Station column on SOA
For those who would rather view than read, the following multi-media is also a good way to begin understanding SOA - Don Box on SOA & part 2 of the same as well as a show on Service Orientation all on MSDN TV. There are also a few webcasts related to patterns & anti-patterns in SOA, on why you can't do SOA without messaging, one on SOA design, & one on developing a business service on the principles of SOA. Also, Steve Swartz on SOA in MSDN's channel 9.
However, by far the most important references in order to understand the themes that will be presented in my blog around Enterprise SOA are -
- A free eBook called Readings in Service Orientation. This provides a clear understanding of SOA within an enterprise architecture. This includes articles on Software Factories, SDM, Workflows, Identity Management, alternate service transports, service versioning & much more by the masters in these fields.
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Don Smith had mentioned the Zapthink SOA roadmap poster [registration required] in a recent workshop he conducted here in Redmond. This is a nice little snapshot of various SOA related technologies [like RDF, WS*, etc], and how they fit into the bigger Enterprise picture.
For where SOA is heading in the long term, the article on the Semantic Web by Tim Berners-Lee & others provides some tantalizing hints.
