SOA Vendors Announced SCA - Service Component Architecture

According to InfoWorld.com, "SCA (Service Componenet Architecture) will allow developers to focus on writing business logic in the building and packaging of applications, according to a source familiar with the announcement."

More from the article: "SCA is designed for SOA, unlike platforms such as J2EE, which have been adapted to SOA. SCA is intended to allow development of application assemblies without regard to middleware or language."

Behind this initiative are IBM, Oracle, SAP, Iona, Siebel, BEA, SAP and Sybase (!).

SOA and Open-Source: Open Servicing

This article, by Ajit Sagar, bring to us some open-source alternatives to implement SOA.

It seems as though as soon as the open source community rallies around a technology, the IT industry starts taking it more seriously - and finds practical application for it. Ironically, although organizations like the concept, despite the maturation of the open source community in a variety of platforms and technologies, adoption of open source products in large organizations is still an uphill battle. The good news is that mainstream vendor products are now based on a combination of open source technologies, and so mature products from the community are finding homes in many corporations.

I have noticed that, in fact, there is a tendency to mix open-source and proprietary products in a SOA implementation. I truly believe that this is the best approach. Let's see an example that Ajit tells in his article: Apache Synapse (read also this preliminar analysis from Gartner)

The idea behind Synapse is intended to address the issue of creating something tangible from the quagmire of standards around Web services. Synapse plans to produce a service broker - lightweight and scalable - based on Web services standards. The broker will be developed with contributions from Infravio, Blue Titan, Iona, Sonic Software, and others. Synapse focuses on the implementation of a pure Web services stack, including WS-Policy, WS-Security, WS-ReliableMessaging, and WS-Addressing. Also, Synapse is targeted to enable SOA adoption by combining with other open source components such as Struts, Axis, Spring, and Hibernate. In essence, Synapse is the equivalent of your open source ESB.

IBM DeveloperWorks Portal: Page Devoted to Software Architecture

Finally IBM has released a page related only to software architecture. Must read resources about SOA, IT Architecture, Rational Softwares for architetcure job etc are available from this page. Add it to your bookmark or, even better, share it at del.icio.us! Best regards.

Gary Booch's Papers (some of them)

Gary Booch is an IBM fellow and a legend regarding software architecture. Here is the page where he keeps good and must read presentations. Are you a software architect? Take a look at these papers! Do not worry if you have to register before, it is worth, believe me.

SOA 101

SOA 101 by ZDNet's Chris Jablonski -- You've been hearing about it more and more, so if you are new to service-oriented architectures (SOA) and want the full scoop but not ready to start connecting the dots between terms like BPEL, WS-Policy, and WSIF, then read this (free PDF) four-page overview from Nucleus Research. The research firm, which bases its conclusions on [...]

Free Oracle Database: 10g Express Edition

Oracle released on Fri, Oct 28th, his Oracle Database 10g Express Edition that, according to announcement, it is free to develop, deploy and distribute. This product is still a beta version but, of course it is a good opportunity to test and to report bugs to Oracle. Interesting, no? I recommend the reading of the FAQ product.