Tag Archives: Web Service

Nicolai M. Josuttis “SOA in Practice”

Architecture, BPM and SOA, Review, , , , , ,

[amtap amazon:asin=0596529554]

A colleague recommended this book (link to amazon.com and amazon.de) to me and I was not disappointed. On the contrary, this was one of the most interesting IT books I have come across so far. The author is pretty well known in the SOA space and a regular speaker on conferences. He has a lot of real world experience and this shines through. What made the book particularly valuable to me, was that Josuttis points out when something is not black or white but gray and discusses the relevant aspects.

This book is probably not so easy to read for a beginner, but certainly of great value to the more experienced reader. It does not provide checklists or vendor recommendations but focuses on patterns and a good conceptual understanding. It will therefore not become outdated as quickly as many other publications but probably be relevant for a number of years to come.

What is an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)?

Architecture, BPM and SOA, ,

If you all too often hear the term “Enterprise Service Bus” or ESB (we all love those acronyms, right?) but never really knew what it’s all about, you should check out this recording by Marc Richards. He gives a great overview what an ESB is at its core. Rather long but worth every minute!

What I particularly like about this presentation is that it’s completely neutral with regard to technology or vendor. Instead Marc explains what an ESB is supposed to do, but not how this is implemented. The term ESB (at its very core) is a concept and neither a technology nor a product can claim that they are the only rightful incarnation. So statements like “An ESB must be BPEL-based” only demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding. You could also have an ESB based on CORBA running on a mainframe. Well, this will probably not happen too often but it underlines the point.