SOA Best Practices: A Conversation with Mark Hapner (Sun Engineer)

This is an interesting interview about the point-of-view from SUN about SOA and SOA-related tecnologies (e.g. WS).

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has arrived, and with it have come a faster application development process and the ability to adapt more flexibly to changing business needs. The Gartner Group predicts that "By 2008, SOA will be a prevailing software engineering practice, ending the 40-year domination of monolithic software architecture." So what is SOA? Basically, it's an IT approach in which applications rely on services available on a network such as the web to facilitate business processes. Implementing an SOA can involve developing applications that use services, making applications available as services so that other applications can use those services, or both.

To get up-to-date on the importance of SOA for Java technology developers, we met with Mark Hapner, Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, who has served as lead architect of the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE, formerly known as J2EE), co-lead of the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) specification, and lead for Java Message Service (JMS). He is currently Sun's chief web services strategist. Hapner also helped create Java Business Integration (JBI) and is Sun's board member on the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I).

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Phil Wainewright wrote this interesting post on his blog about SaaS (Software as a Service). I truly believe in SaaS and I think that this new approach can change our "old ideas" regarding software delivery.
One of the references in SaaS is Amy Wohl; more than an enthusiastic, she is a evangelist! If you believe in software as a service, read these list that Mr. Wainewright prepared and visit Whol`s website:

• Enterprise SaaS
• SaaS versus Free Software
• But How Will We Make Money?
• Is SaaS About New Applications or New Forms of Distribution?
• SaaS versus the Storm
• How Big is an SaaS Customer?
• How to Introduce Users to Software as a Service
• SaaS is Based on Service

Extending the RUP with the Enterprise Unified Process (EUP)

This is the Scott W. Ambler's proposal: extend the RUP, creating the EUP (Enterprise Unified Process), to meet the real-world needs of mid-to-large-sized organizations.

The Rationale:

Thousands of organizations worldwide have adopted the Rational Unified Process (RUP) to help improve their software development processes. But Scott Ambler points out that we need to go even further; the Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) extends the RUP to meet the real-world needs of mid- to large-sized organizations.

Beyond Sw Development:

There is more to the lifecycle of a system than software development. The operation and support of a system after it’s in production are crucial to your success; why bother building the system if you can’t run it? The retirement of a system that is no longer needed or that is to be replaced by another system is also important

The EUP phases are:
1. Inception. During this phase, you achieve stakeholder consensus regarding the objectives for the project and obtain funding;
2. Elaboration. During this phase, you specify requirements in greater detail and prove the architecture for the system;
3. Construction. The focus of this phase is developing the system to the point where it’s ready for deployment;
4. Transition. This phase focuses on delivering the system into production;
5. Production. This phase encompasses the period of the system lifecycle at which you operate and support a system until it’s either replaced with a new version or retired and removed completely from use;
6. Retirement. The focus of this phase is the removal of a system from production;

Time for an SOA-open source mashup

This time Joe Mckendrick talk again about the (inevitable) mix between proprietary and open-source SOA implementation. See why:

It's an unavoidable fact; many SOAs will be running on the LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP/Perl/Python) and LAMJ (Linux-Apache-MySQL-J2EE) stacks.

Also:

The open-source JBoss, JonAS, and Apache application servers are also open-source phenomena that are becoming a huge part of the Web services/SOA scene. True, an SOA can be constructed entirely on commercial software with standardized interfaces. But an SOA running on a commodity open-source environment — built with open-source toolsets — is an incredible value proposition, far more than an SOA built on WebSphere, WebLogic, or Microsoft BizTalk and .NET. These app servers have steep licensing costs, and companies looking for low-end platforms to build their services can turn to open-source app servers such as JBoss and Apache Geronimo.

IBM

Consider the evolving strategies of two of the biggest infrastructure providers, IBM and BEA. IBM loves Linux, of course, one, because it's not Microsoft, and two, because the open-source OS provides a growth path for Big Blue's legacy systems ... ...For IBM, this is an entree into the small to medium size business market, and in response to the growing prevalence of open-source products such as JBoss and JonAS.

BEA

...For example, in October, BEA announces a "blended" approach to provide automated management and production-level support for customers using the open-source Apache Tomcat servlet container. Previously, BEA Systems has made overtures to the open-source folks, announcing that new updates to its Beehive component-based development environment were available through the open-source Apache Software Foundation. The Apache Beehive projects will also be able to run on JOnAS, Apache Geronimo, and Apache Tomcat server

Five SOA Predictions for 2006

Dave Linthicum posted this post on Jan, 2nd '06: his 5 SOA "hot topics" for this year. They are:

1. More consolidation. Usually, in an emerging space, consolidation occurs once a space gets hot then begins to cool.

2. Focus on outside-in SOA. As we begin to stand up more public Web services and marketplaces that sell them, there will be a focus on how to leverage those services within the enterprise.

3. Focus on ROI. At the end of the day we should be able to define the amount of money a SOA will save us, now and longer term.

4. Movement to true services. As we learn more about this technology we're also learning the differences between information- and service-oriented integration, and understand that true services provide more value.

5. A few killer SOAs will emerge. As we get better at implementing this technology, a few very good architectures will begin to emerge that add a great deal of value to the organizations who implement them.

SOA and Java: SYS-CON Announces Readers' Choice Awards

SYS-CON Announces Readers' Choice Awards for SOA, Web Services, Java, and XML Technologies
— SYS-CON Media announced today the results of its 10th annual 'Readers' Choice Awards' for best products and tools for the SOA, Web Services, Java and XML technologies. Winners and three finalists were announced today in 21 categories by SOA Web Services Journal. Java Developer's Journal also announced winners and finalists in 26 distinct product and tool categories.

Some results:
SOA

1) Best SOA / Service-Oriented Architecture
Winner: webMethods Enterprise Services Platform (webMethods)

Runners-Up:
1) BEA WebLogic Platform (BEA Systems)
2) IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation (IBM)
3) Artix (IONA Technologies)

2) Best Application Server for SOA / Web Services
Winner: BEA WebLogic Server 8.1 (BEA Systems)

Runners-Up:
1) Sun Java System Application Server (Sun Microsystems)
2) JBoss Application Server (JBoss)
3) WebSphere Application Server (IBM)

3) Best Web Services Platform
Winner: Java EE (Sun Microsystems)

6) Best Framework for SOA and Web Services
Winner: Java Web Services Developer Pack (Sun Microsystems)

10) Best GUI for SOA
Winner: Eclipse (Eclipse Foundation)

20) Best SOA Portal Platform
Winner: Sun Java System Portal Server (Sun Microsystems)

Java
1) Best Java Application Server
Winner: BEA WebLogic Server (BEA Systems)
Runners-Up:
1) JBoss Application Server (JBoss)

2) Best Java Application
Winner: Eclipse (Eclipse Foundation)

10) Best Rich Client Platform
Winner: Eclipse Rich Client Platform (Eclipse Foundation)

13) Best Java Messaging Tool
Winner: IBM WebSphere MQ (IBM)

17) Best Team Development Tool
Winner: Eclipse IDE (Eclipse Foundation)

26) Best Java Book
Winner: Hibernate in Action (Manning Publications)
Runners-Up:
1) J2EE BluePrints (Sun Microsystems)
2) Core Java 2 (Sun Microsystems)
3) Java Developer’s Guide to Eclipse (IBM)

Celtix: Open Source Java Enterprise Service Bus

Celtix is an open-source JAVA ESB (Enterprise Sevice Bus). Celtix is developed by IONA Technologies and on December, 22th reached its 3rd milestone.

With the delivery of Milestone 3, the Celtix project compares favourably with available commercial ESBs," explained Carl Trieloff, director, Open Source Programs, IONA. "The Celtix community has delivered robust JMS support and this, combined with the other features made available in Milestone 3, gives end users a powerful, and cost-effective, ESB to support their Service Oriented Architecture and other integration projects.

A good source of information is (of course) the Celtix Wiki. There you can learn to build a simple application using Celtix ESB: "End-to-End HelloWorld" (believe or not!).

How to Implement a Successful SOA Pilot Program

SOAWebServices Jornal presents an interesting article titled "How to Implement a Successful SOA Pilot Program". Dan Foody and Alex Rosen (authors) give us some useful tips about a SOA implementation.
Critical Pre-SOA Initiative Questions

1. How do we phase in and successfully manage the move to SOA within the current IT environment?
2. How do we leverage the existing IT infrastructure and investments in the SOA?
3. What procedures need to be established or modified?
4. Where will policy and security reside?
5. How do we explain the benefits of SOA and provide financial justification to the business stakeholders?
6. How does the move from silos to SOA impact our ability to detect and resolve problems?
7. Who owns shared applications or services and how do we allocate costs and budgets for these services?
8. What do we need to do to ensure our SOA scales from pilot to production? With thorough, up-front planning, a transition to SOA can be achieved efficiently and provide tangible benefits to the enterprise. The following passages will offer guidance in answering the questions listed above.

Critical Question to Answer:

1. What are your primary reasons for using SOA? (To reduce costs? Achieve better flexibility? Enable faster delivery? Improve customer satisfaction?)
2. What is driving your near-term use of SOA? (Connecting your core applications? Integrating with your partners? Providing a single view for customers and/or users? Getting real-time business metrics? Regulatory compliance?)
3. What is the long-term potential for SOA in your organization? (Faster product introductions? Flexible outsourcing? Business process flexibility? Stricter governance? Other?)

10 Steps to SOA

This article from ComputerWorld/Australia briefly point out 10 (good) steps toward SOA.
"True, SOA (service oriented architecture) builds on the stack of protocols that define Web services, but it is hardly limited to that stack and draws as much on time-honoured notions of business "re-engineering" as it does on XML, SOAP, and WSDL. Simply put, SOA is a broad, standards-based framework in which services are built, deployed, managed, and orchestrated in pursuit of new and much more agile IT infrastructures that respond swiftly to shifting business demands."

These 10 Steps would be:
1: Think big, start small
2: Go to the whiteboard
3: Survey your surroundings
4: Connect your first services
5: Deploy registry
6: Start tackling governance
7: Lay your security plans
8: Messaging infrastructure
9: Deploy service management
10: Consider orchestration

Good reading!

Get started now with Eclipse

New to Eclipse? This is an excellent article from IBM/DeveloperWorks:

"Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing an extensible development platform and application frameworks for building software. This article gives you links to the latest version of Eclipse, information on IBM's involvement with Eclipse, and a guide to some of the most interesting Eclipse projects. Learn what Eclipse is good for, why it is important, how you can get started, and where to learn more about it."

Main topics:

• What is Eclipse?
• What Eclipse is good for?
• Why is Eclipse important?
• What does IBM have to do with Eclipse?
• What are the Eclipse communities?
• Why should I contribute to Eclipse?
• How can I become an Eclipse committer?
• What should I know about using or contributing to Eclipse?
• What are some Eclipse's interesting projects?
• Who wrote this guide?

The SOA Weblog: Definition of Service-Oriented Architecture

Tired of SOA definitions? Here is another one :-):

In Service-Oriented Architecture autonomous, loosely-coupled and coarse-grained services with well-defined interfaces provide business functionality and can be discovered and accessed through a supportive infrastructure. This allows internal and external system integration as well as the flexible reuse of application logic through the composition of services.

Did you realize that there is no mention to any specific product? I liked it!

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.

SOA Modeling and Architecture (by IBM)

This a 4 pages paper from IBM whose highlight are:

- Aligns business and IT goals through service modeling that is designed to connect an enterprise's business model with its technology model
- Helps ensure that business knowledge in legacy applications can be accessed in a new, integrated, SOA
- Helps increase business flexibility and reduce risks by validating several aspects of SOA design, from business goal to service realization

The CMMi of SOA: from ESB to ESP, an action-oriented SOA

This post from blogs@ZDNet talks about the announcing that three SOA vendors are lauching something called "SOA Maturity Model". According to this model, SOA has five key phases in its lifecycle: from initial projects to evolution into a full-fledged "enterprise nervous system". The model is based on CMMI from CMU.edu.

We have the "Three SOA amigos": AmberPoint, Sonic Software and Systinet.

The model defines five levels of maturity and sets a vision for business benefits realized at each of these levels.

- Level 1: This is the initial learning and initial project phase of SOA adoption. Projects here are typically done to simultaneously meet a specific need to implement functionality while trying out specific technologies and an approach to SOA.
- Level 2: At this level, standards are set as to the technical governance of SOA implementation, typically under leadership of the architecture organization.
- Level 3: A partnership forms between technology and business organizations in order to assure that the use of SOA provides clear business responsiveness.
- Level 4: Level 4 focuses on measuring and presenting these processes at the business level so as to provide continuous feedback on the performance and business impact of the processes implemented at Level 3.
- Level 5: The SOA information systems becomes the "enterprise nervous system" and takes action automatically according to events occurring at the business level according to rules optimizing business goals.

IBM Ponies Up Rational Wares To Open Source

IBM announced on Oct 12th plans to contribute with Open source Community by "giving" a subset of the IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP). See a excerpt:
"IBM will contribute a subset of the IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP), a software process platform that has guided some 500,000 developers around the world in projects ranging from small-scale product development to large industrial-strength systems. RUP is a vast collection of methods and best practices for promoting quality and efficiency throughout software development projects. IBM's donation will also provide a foundation architecture and Web-based tools for the industry to engineer, collaborate on, share and reuse software development best practices."

other link related to:
- http://www.soa-pipeline.com/172300528?cid=rssfeed_pl_soa