Filling Holes in the SOA Stack with Runtime Governance

ZapThink considers runtime SOA governance a requirement of successful SOA, greatly increasing the chances that the SOA implementation will have business value. Indeed, the lack of adequate runtime SOA governance greatly reduces the chances of success. The ability to create and monitor policies, manage performance, secure the system, and provide self-healing mechanisms means the SOA implementation will provide ongoing value through productivity benefits.

However, most SOA stack vendors do not address many of the key requirements of SOA, including solution patterns around runtime SOA goverance. Considering this limitation, it’s important to address these issues with the proper technology, leveraged in the proper way. Thus, the purpose of this paper.

Design & Validate SOA in a Heterogeneous Environment

The promised business value of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is driving many enterprises to purchase key SOA-related technologies, such as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), in advance of the forthcoming architecture. However, the road to SOA is not always clear, and many enterprise architects, developers, and project leaders require guidance to understand the steps to SOA success. Such guidance must include clear, interactive, and adaptive process that ensures that team members understand all requirements, document all details, and plan all testing and implementation tasks.

The purpose of this manual is to walk those charged with designing and building their SOA implementation through the issues, steps, and procedures they require to create their first iteration of SOA, and how to build on that experience to drive a more systemic change within their enterprise. We’re going to take you through this journey assuming that you have the technology on hand, whether that is an integration server, application server, or an ESB, and focus on the best practices and architectural patterns for that particular category of technology. Since SOA is by nature heterogeneous, strategies for resolving architectural challenges earlier in the lifecycle using well-defined semantics will be discussed.

Systemic to this manual is how to approach testing in the context of SOA. While many consider testing as something that is at the end of the process, it’s actually a part of each step. Thus, as part of this manual we will teach you about testing approaches and key enabling technology.

Kapow Technologies: Turning the Web into the World’s Largest Database

The use of unstructured data within enterprises today has been more art than science, and in most cases an opportunity that many people have yet to understand. Truth-be-told, there are terabytes and terabytes of useful information throughout the enterprise and the World Wide Web that if placed into the proper context could have an ROI much higher than existing data mining approaches.

Access to this unstructured information has been out of reach of many enterprises today due to the cost and complexity of the technology. However, with the Kapow Technologies offering, enterprises now have an on-demand mechanism for searching, grabbing, refining, and understanding unstructured data, and can place them in the context of enterprise data for even more value.

In addition, in the emerging world of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Kapow is also providing customers with the ability to address unstructured data as Services, thus providing an on-ramp for any data source for use within mashups in the SOA environment.

SOA Experiences from the Front Line

Dave Linthicum’s presentation for the Tidal Software speaking event in April, 2008. Covers practical advice for the implementation of SOA.

23-slide PowerPoint in pdf format.

Building Data-Rich SOBAs in a Heterogeneous Environment

The importance of the Data Services Layer for SOA, Service-Oriented Business Applications (SOBAs), and Service Consumers. Also explores the notion of Enterprise Mashups from the data perspective.

Delivered at DataDirect’s Architect Tutorial series in April – May, 2008.

34-slide PowerPoint in pdf format.

The “S” in “SOA” is Services

Within the world of SOA, Services are the building blocks and at the lowest level of the stack. They are the functional primitives of SOA. However, most enterprises are so focused on the architecture that the underlying Services get very little attention. In order to create and maintain a healthy …

Why Big Consulting is Hurting SOA

As larger organizations begin to embark on their Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) projects, there is some misdirecting going on that you should be aware of, which will allow you to make an educated decision as to, not only what you’re going to do, but who’s going to help you. At issue …

ZapForum Podcast: Converging Data & Documents in SOA

ZapForum Podcast for January 11, 2008 features

Guest Expert Jake Sorofman, VP of Marketing, JustSystems.

Listen to this Podcast and you will:

• Learn about the role of documents in SOA
• Get an idea of the role XML has in the creation of content
• Understand how dynamic documents that display application functionality can help implement document-centric business processes in the context of SOA

ZapForum Podcast: How Much SOA Do You Need?

ZapForum Podcast for December 14, 2007 features

Guest Expert Kyle Gabhart, Director, SOA Technology, Web Age Solutions.

Listen to this Podcast and you will:

• Learn how a “Selective SOA” approach can reduce the risk of a SOA initiative
• Understand how a limited scope SOA project should handle infrastructure and governance issues
• Learn about how to train SOA architects as well as details on the ZapThink/Web Age Solutions partnership for delivering Licensed ZapThink Architect credentialing sessions

Helping out the SOA Vendors

When I wrote about href="http://www.zapthink.com/report.html?id=ZAPFLASH-2007920">vendor-driven
architectures (VDA) in my first ZapFlash, I had a few vendors ask me to
look on the other side of the fence. In essence, to consider how vendors can
better address the needs of the customer, considering the new drivers with SOA.

So, why do they need help? In …