Standards

Understanding the Real Costs of Integration

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:45:00 EDT

Are implementations of Web Services simply "old wine in new bottles," with interfaces every bit as brittle and tightly-coupled as in the past, or are they really implementing Service-Oriented Integration among Services at many levels of granularity? Clearly, "Web Services Integration" does not equal "Service-Oriented Integration." We are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, as long as we understand the appropriate use of Service-Oriented Integration.

In Praise of the Open Cloud Manifesto

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:15:00 EDT

The publication of the Open Cloud Manifesto is positive. The Cloud, driven by virtualization, is surfacing at the right time in the market and can advance computing in this generation. The concept of "openness" is necessary for innovation to thrive. Publishing an open view with multiple and varied participants is an example of global lifecycle transformation where organizations work together across boundaries.

Starting an SOA Initiative or Continuing the Journey?

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:45:00 EST

It seems as if every few years we're inspired to learn about the next big thing in IT. Of course, it usually begins with some three letter acronym ("TLA"), is punctuated by the promise of significant ROI and ends with an eyebrow raising price tag. So why should SOA be anything different? Over the years SOA went from being an industry buzzword to becoming a must-have strategy with proven and perceived benefits.

Book Excerpt: Enabling Agile Business with SOA

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 06:00:00 EST

Cost cutting is a common demand that is levied on technology organizations. Consequently, each new paradigm within the industry is pitched by some as a cost-cutting strategy. The trouble is that many enterprises attempt some grand enterprise-wide deployment rather than incrementally growing their SOA over time and incorporating lessons learned along the way.

WOA for the Enterprise

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 07:00:00 EST

WOA, or web-oriented architecture, has proven itself as a viable approach to building large-scale, worldwide web services. This article introduces the principles behind WOA, how it is applied, and why it should be used even inside the enterprise. Before diving into the meat of this article, let's quickly review where WOA came from and why it has gained traction among many new technology companies.

Laying the Groundwork for SOA Success

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 09:15:00 EST

For a business to be sustainable today, it must be supported by a truly sustainable architecture. This type of architecture must have built-in agility and reusability. To be able to support the disparate end-to-end transaction components involved in converting leads to cash, this architecture must be sufficiently free form in its inter-business process communication. All businesses require this, whatever the business model.

SOA Product Review: Intel XML Software Suite 1.1

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:00:00 EDT

The one thing that unifies the distributed computing style known as SOA, in most of its manifestations, is self-describing data via the Extensible Markup Language (XML). The benefits of XML over opaque message formats in data interchange are well established. No matter if your focus is SOAP, REST, POX, or syndication with RSS or ATOM, your applications will revolve around XML processing.

SOA Patterns: Basic Structural Patterns – Part 3

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 10:14:00 EDT

For one of the projects I worked on, we had to build a sales support system for a mobile operator. It would probably not come as a surprise to you if I told you that the competition between mobile operators is very fierce. The result of this competition is that the operator's marketing departments burn the midnight oil trying to come up with new usage plans and bundles to increase their sales.

SOA Patterns: Basic Structural Patterns – Part 2

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:15:00 EDT

Another important attribute of service construction is: How do we handle messages once we get them either on the edge component or in the service? The Transactional Service Pattern allows for solving this problem while also dealing with reliability problems. The nominal scenario of SOA is for a service to get a request to do something from a service consumer, the service then handles the request, maybe asking other services to do some stuff as well, and then produces one or more reactions for the consumer that initiated the request.

SOA Patterns: Basic Structural Patterns - Part 1

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:00:00 EDT

Service-oriented architecture has become the leading solution for complex, connected business systems. While it's easy to grasp the theory of SOA, implementing well-designed, practical SOA systems can be a difficult challenge. SOA Patterns provides detailed, technology-neutral solutions to the challenges by providing architectural guidance through patterns and anti-patterns. Part 1 of this excerpt focuses on two patterns that address matters of services. These are the patterns you are most likely to use even if your service has modest requirements.

EDI to XML: A Practical Approach

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:45:00 EDT

While EDI transactions account for most worldwide commercial activity, XML-based alternatives are beginning to gain traction. According to Forrester Research, stateful XML, stateless XML, and even flat file exchanges are all projected to grow at a faster rate than EDI over the next few years. The firm predicts stateful XML transactions will be required for a growing number of B2B process-oriented transactions and are projected to exceed the growth of EDI transactions over the next five years.

The Unreliable Internet

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:50:00 EDT

The Internet's a dangerous place for a message. Component failures, network connection issues, and other problems can prevent a message from being delivered. Fortunately, there's WS-ReliableMessaging, which makes sure messages get through. This article explains how to use reliable messaging, why you should use it, and how to use it with WSO2's Web Services Application Server (WSO2 WSAS) 2.1.

Data - SOA's Last Mile

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:45:00 EDT

According to Wikipedia, 'The last mile (or last kilometer) is the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider to a customer. Usually referred to by the telecommunications and cable television industries, it is typically seen as an expensive challenge because 'fanning out' wires and cables is a considerable physical undertaking.' The significant complexity, cost, and risk associated with this situation delayed many broadband rollouts until new technology became available that could realize the 'last mile.'

SOA Product Review: Managed Methods JaxView 4.0

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 10:00:00 EDT

Whether you work for a very large company with thousands of services in production or a small company with only a couple, visibility into the performance and uptime of those services is critical. Before you start investigating the myriad of governance products on the market, many of which will set you back a great deal of money, let me save you some time (and money).

Leveraging SCA for Standardizing the Composite Application Ecosystem

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:00:00 EDT

Composite applications are the new breed of applications that are built rapidly by composing ready-made configurable and customizable service components together. This is similar in spirit to creating new recognizable objects by snapping together pre-fabricated Lego blocks in unforeseen ways.

Best Practices for SOA: Building a Data Services Layer

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:30:00 EDT

These days nearly every sizable organization has either implemented some form of SOA or has it on their roadmap. They quickly find that SOA efforts tend to expand like spider webs, eventually touching every corner of IT as well as the business itself. Due to the vital role that data plays both in business and systems operations, database architects, information specialists, data integration experts, and anyone responsible for data persistence in an organization are increasingly being called on to contribute to their organization's SOA initiatives - whether or not this was intended at the onset.

SOA or DOA

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:45:00 EDT

Web applications built on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) promise to greatly improve IT efficiency and business agility. SOA establishes data and protocol standards so that existing internal and third-party application modules or services can be reused and orchestrated into business applications.

Layer 7 Technologies Expands SOA Into Belgian Market

Wed, 28 May 2008 15:30:00 EDT

Layer 7 Technologies announced its go-to-market partnership with Steria Benelux. Steria will act as a channel partner for Layer 7's SOA gateway products in Belgium to offer leading SOA security, governance solutions and support to its current and prospective customers.

SOA World - Growing an SOA Garden

Fri, 23 May 2008 14:30:00 EDT

Adopting SOA is a lot like gardening. It takes time, skill, a lot of hard work, and the process can be messy and even a bit frustrating at times. I know you've probably heard tons of different analogies that attempt to put SOA and governance into everyday terms and I'm sure that growing the SOA 'garden' through governance won't be the last.

Long-Tail SOA and the Mythology of Re-Use

Thu, 22 May 2008 10:30:00 EDT

Not all services are created equal. It would be great if implementing SOA were simply a matter of applying a standard design pattern to all services. Once IT had identified and codified an optimal design standard, services could be stamped out in assembly-line fashion until the IT landscape had been transformed. Unfortunately, we don't live in a cookie-cutter service Utopia.

A SOA Adaptation Strategy

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:15:00 EDT

Interoperability is the ability of two or more systems to work with each other. In the loosely coupled environment of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), separate resources don't have to know how each of them work, but they do need to interoperate with each other by having enough common ground to exchange messages without error or misunderstanding.

Why Enterprise Architects Continue to Fall Short with SOA

Tue, 13 May 2008 16:00:00 EDT

If you read this column and listen to my podcasts, you know that I call SOA what SOA is - an architectural pattern. In many instances, SOA is a vital component of healthy enterprise architecture. Indeed, I've provided some keynote talks around this very topic at about half-a-dozen enterprise architecture conferences to date. However, generally speaking, the enterprise architects out there still don't 'get' SOA, and they continue to do a poor-to-average job of creating enterprise architectures that...well...support their enterprise.

Testing Process Orchestrations Based on the BPEL Standard

Mon, 05 May 2008 18:00:00 EDT

Composite applications are made up of discreet services that have been tried and proven reliable, but building an orchestration that incorporates services that come from several sources, some of them outside of the company, could introduce testing hazards beyond just bad output. For example, let's say that your business has a process that includes activities to run a credit check with an external credit agency or to schedule a package delivery with an external shipping service.

OnDemand Integration - Integration-as-Service

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:00:00 EDT

The way business applications are evolving, enterprises are learning to accept and embrace the notion of applications that they neither control nor host. Now enterprises are leveraging applications that run a business through the Internet platform. As these applications become core to many businesses, so does the need to incorporate these applications into the enterprise's existing infrastructure and make them work together.

Improving Customer's SOA Experience with DITA

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:00:00 EDT

We've all experienced the thrill of acquiring a new product only to have it diminished when it's not as easy to use as expected. You rip open the box ready to start playing with your new gizmo and 20 minutes later you're stuck on the phone with tech support because the instruction book was incomprehensible.

Where Have All the SOA Standards Gone?

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:15:00 EDT

To mark a new standard in the SOA space, I create a Google Alert and sift through the pile of links returned to get the scope of its maturation. I'm currently tracking over 60 standards, starting with SOAP and XML (XML happened way before Google was cool).

Open SOA Collaboration

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:00:00 EST

Last month an alliance of leading vendors announced progress on specifications to define a language-neutral programming model for application development in SOA environments. They call this specification Open SOA Collaboration. In essence, they are proposing a new standard to create and manage IT, making the process of integrating different third-party SOA technologies 'less onerous,' they say. Or, we can call this a standard way of delivering services, making it easier to work and play well together.

An Overview Of The Java WSDP 1.5

Thu, 26 May 2005 10:00:00 EDT

It can be difficult for developers, architects, and managers to keep up with new software packages and releases. This can be especially true with fast moving technologies like Web services. This article provides an overview of the main technologies that comprise the Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java WSDP). For more in-depth knowledge of the WSDP, simply download it and walk through the examples or complete the Java Web Services Tutorial. In an effort to standardize XML and Web services-related technologies, Sun Microsystems has developed implementations of popular standards and published them under the umbrella title of the WSDP. The toolkit's stated purpose is to simplify the development, testing, and deployment of secure and interoperable Web services. Version 1.5 is the latest release of the WSDP and contains many updates to existing technologies, new features, and a collection of bug fixes. This article will examine the main technologies provided in the WSDP and review their purpose and status.

The State of Standards

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 10:00:00 EDT

There is an old saying among standards wonks: 'The most wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them.' And this truism is more applicable today than ever before. There are so many WS-* specifications, I've started referring to them as WS-Vertigo.

Was the Universal Service Registry a Dream?

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST

It is sometimes beneficial to stop what you're doing, take a look around, and see where you've come from and where you are going. This regrouping is taking place right now across the software industry and is focused on the problem space of Web service description, discovery, and integration. At a high level, this article briefly discusses the progress made to date at solving the problem, describes the benefits and shortcomings of current technology, and presents a vision of the possible future of Web services infrastructure.

Process-Centric Realization of SOA

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST

Agile and adaptive business processes and supporting IT infrastructure are the holy grail of enterprise applications. The industry is heading in the right direction to start delivering on this promise.

Putting the EDA in SOA

Wed, 13 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

The current slate of Web services standards has evolved into a mature set of very useful API's and into service-oriented architectures, or SOAs. Enterprise integration, however, includes many requirements that are not met by SOAs alone. A movement is under way to augment Web services with a new set of standards that address the other side of integration - Event Driven Architectures, or EDAs.

WSIF & JSR-208

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

There's a common misconception that Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL) is useful only if all of your systems are Web services. This article describes how Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF) enables BPEL to orchestrate nearly any legacy system as if it were a Web service - without having to explicitly wrap or publish it as one.

Automating MISMO Processes

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Implementing industry standards for business processes can do far more than provide a common protocol for operations. Once commodity information or documents are standardized, it makes sense to look at what common actions need to be taken on that data or document - and standardize those as well.

Web Service Local Reference

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

There is a need for container-managed support for local invocations among colocated Web services. This feature would be similar to EJB local invocations in the J2EE world.

Federated Identity Standards

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Business is becoming increasingly virtual and decentralized, while real-time management of relationships with employees, contractors, partners, suppliers, and customers is becoming ever more crucial. Even within a single company, applications may reside on different platforms, in separate departmental security domains, in legacy databases derived from prior acquisitions, or (thanks to outsourcing) in separate companies.

Stretching UDDI

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration) is fast becoming a standard for storing business processes available on the Web. Although UDDI is capable of storing many different types of data, for the purposes of this article I'll focus on how UDDI can be used to register Web services, thereby making them available for application-level consumption.

Application Server Architecture and BPEL

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 00:00:00 EDT

In recent years the application server has greatly evolved, expanding the set of core services provided by the infrastructure. The current Java platform supports XML data handling, scalability, load balancing, and other capabilities that allow application-level services to be developed more easily and deployed more reliably. This progression must now address developers' latest concerns regarding security, distributed transactions, and reliable messaging because applications no longer stand alone - they're deployed into a technology ecosystem that can span departmental and organizational boundaries.

UDDI as an Extended Web Services Registry

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 00:00:00 EDT

As enterprises build a critical mass of Web services, they need some way of keeping track of those services. UDDI is an ideal store for such information. Using UDDI's built-in abstractions of business services, binding templates, and tModels referring to interface specifications, UDDI can be used to manage all of the addresses and protocols and formats of those services.

WSRP and the Enterprise Portal

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Web portal software has emerged as one of the most important components of software enterprises over the last few years. That success has carried with it the challenge of how to integrate disparate software services into the portal - services that can live across multiple platforms, operating systems, and networks.