Review By: Dale Perry
07/08/2010This book provides a very basic overview of service-oriented architecture (SOA). The general components of SOA are sufficiently covered to allow someone not at all familiar with the concepts to understand them. The book does not go to the level required to actually implement the specific technologies, but that is not its intent.

The authors touch on many different possibilities and scenarios for the deployment and use of SOA within the business community. The general concepts and ideas behind SOA are introduced and discussed using a very simple case study. The descriptions and applications of SOA are on a level that a typical businessperson can grasp, but an IT specialist would require more information and details to implement the SOA concepts.

The material flows well, and the numerous diagrams reinforce the discussion points well. The final chapters use the case study to discuss how an actual SOA might be implemented and some of the management and personnel issues associated with SOA.

I was looking at the book from a testing and quality assurance perspective, but it provides no direct insights into these areas. There are many implications—some references to security and management--but not sufficient to plan any quality control/testing efforts.

The authors do a reasonable job of presenting both the positive and negative aspects of the various aspects of SOA, but I still found the book to be a bit overly optimistic and pro-SOA. Many of the examples of possible applications of SOA technology, although completely plausible and reasonable, do not address the possible problems associated with converting or migrating existing applications to an SOA-based process. Even if building a new application, I think there are many issues yet to be resolved. And, having been in the industry for over thirty years, I do not think the underlying Web service components are up to speed yet (granted, several of these are mentioned by the author). The pro-SOA viewpoint seems to overly minimize some of the critical issues.

The book provides a good general overview of SOA concepts, and it confirmed one suspicion I’ve held for some time: SOA is just a fancy buzzword for applications built using Web services.