"Service Oriented Architecture is a hot, but often misunderstood topic in IT today. Thomas articulately describes the concepts, specifications, and standards behind service orientation and Web Services. For enterprises adopting SOA, there is detailed advice for service-oriented analysis, planning, and design. This book is a must read!"

–Alex Lynch, Principal Consultant, Microsoft Enterprise Services

"One primary objective of applying SOA in design is to provide business value to the solutions we build. Understanding the right approach to analyzing, designing, and developing service-oriented solutions is critical. Thomas has done a great job of demystifying SOA in practical terms with his book."

–Rick Weaver, IBM Senior Consulting Certified SW I/T Specialist

"A pragmatic guide to SOA principles, strategy, and best practices that distills the hype into a general framework for approaching SOA adoption in complex enterprise environments."

–Sameer Tyagi, Senior Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystems

"A very timely and much needed contribution to a rapidly emerging field. Through clarifying the principles and nuances of this space, the author provides a comprehensive treatment of critical key aspects of SOA from analysis and planning to standards ranging from WS-specifications to BPEL. I'll be recommending this book to both clients and peers who are planning on embracing SOA principles."

–Ravi Palepu, Senior Field Architect, Rogue Wave Software

"Finally, an SOA book based on real implementation experience in production environments. Too many SOA books get lost in the technical details of Web Services standards, or simply repeat vendor hype. This book covers the really hard parts: the complex process of planning, designing and implementing service-oriented architectures that meet organizational goals. It is an essential companion to any software developer, architect, or project manager implementing–or thinking about implementing–a service-oriented architecture."

–Priscilla Walmsley, Managing Director of Datypic

"Thomas Erl's Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design is as good an introduction to service-oriented architectures as one could wish for. In a single volume, it covers the entire topic, from theory to real-world use to technical details. The examples are superb and the writing is wonderfully clear."

–Ronald Bourret, Author, "XML and Databases"

"Finally an SOA book which gets to the point with real world answers and examples. Erl guides you on a real world SOA journey. From architecture design to industry standards, this book is well written and can be easily referenced for everyday use. When embarking on your own service orientated adventures, this is the book you want in your bag."

–Clark Sell, Vice President, CSell Incorporated

"Organizations struggling to evolve existing service-oriented solutions beyond simple Web Services now have an expert resource available. Leading the way to the true service-oriented enterprise, Thomas Erl demystifies the complexities of the open WS-I standards with detailed practical discussions and case studies. Erl's depth and clarity makes this work a superb complement to his Field Guide."

–Kevin P. Davis, PhD., Software Architect

"This book is an excellent guide for architects, developers, and managers who are already working with or are considering developing Web Services or Service-Oriented Architecture solutions. The book is divided into four sections. In the first section the fundamental technologies of XML, Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures are described in detail with attention given to emerging standards. The book is well written and very thorough in its coverage of the subject. I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in enterprise level service architectures."

–Adam Hocek, President and CTO, Broadstrokes, Inc.

Additional praise quotes are published at: www.soabooks.com/reviews.asp

The foremost "how-to" guide to SOA

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is at the heart of a revolutionary computing platform that is being adopted world-wide and has earned the support of every major software provider. In Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design, Thomas Erl presents the first end-to-end tutorial that provides step-by-step instructions for modeling and designing service-oriented solutions from the ground up.

Erl uses more than 125 case study examples and over 300 diagrams to illuminate the most important facets of building SOA platforms: goals, obstacles, concepts, technologies, standards, delivery strategies, and processes for analysis and design.

His book's broad coverage includes

• Detailed step-by-step processes for service-oriented analysis and service-oriented design

• An in-depth exploration of service-orientation as a distinct design paradigm, including a comparison to object-orientation

• A comprehensive study of SOA support in .NET and J2EE development and runtime platforms

• Descriptions of over a dozen key Web services technologies and WS-* specifications, including explanations of how they interrelate and how they are positioned within SOA

• The use of "In Plain English" sections, which describe complex concepts through non-technical analogies

• Guidelines for service-oriented business modeling and the creation of specialized service abstraction layers

• A study contrasting past architectures with SOA and reviewing current industry influences

• Project planning and the comparison of different SOA delivery strategies

The goal of this book is to help you attain a solid understanding of what constitutes contemporary SOA along with step-by-step guidance for realizing its successful implementation.

About the Web Sites

Erl's Service-Oriented Architecture books are supported by two Web sites. http://www.soabooks.com provides a variety of content resources and http://www.soaspecs.com supplies a descriptive portal to referenced specifications.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 60 Ratings

Excessively long winded for my use - 2007-12-14
Reviewer Rating:
It's hard to understand how the same author wrote this and SOA Principles of Service Design (The Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl) and Service-Oriented Architecture: A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services (The Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl), both of which had more useful information in a much more compact package.

The only real use I can think of for this book is perhaps to quote in a sales context regarding the benefits of SOA to someone who hasn't heard of it. That said, although I believe in SOA as a powerful mechanism, I believe the claims in the book are less well supported then the heft of the book might imply. Other technical details like the importance of UDDI are largely out of date.

I disagree with some of the other reviewers who call the book overly theoretical: I would not give it that much credit. Theory would call on or reference solid research; this book provides anecdotal evidence at best.

Aside from some potential use to sales folks (perhaps why Sun, IBM and MS endorse the book), I think most will want to pass on this one.

Independent View of SOA - 2008-02-28
Reviewer Rating:
Thomas Erl in this book provides an excellent reference and an independent/agnostic view of SOA that is not cluttered with Vendor speak. What I thought was valuable is the definition of business benefits, case studies and the beginning of SOA Principals and terminology that provides an organization a mechanism to organize their efforts and improve focus. Having worked with Web Services since 2001 and implemented them at many customers, the application and discussion of WS in conjunction with SOA is very helpful.

Much too verbose, will confuse someone just getting into SOA - 2009-07-16
Reviewer Rating:
This book has far to much "Hamburger Helper" in it. I am a veteran at SOA and wanted a book I could reference. It is long winded. For example, the author goes through 106 pages before he gets to the true definition of SOA on that page 106. This should be in the first 5 pages. The definition is good but why the heck did he have to confuse the novice reader with all that "contemporary" and "Primitive" SOA discussion. I cut through those pages fast but I bet a novice is going to be really confused reading this book. I would not recommend this to customers as some of the testimonials at the front suggest. I picked up a few ideas here and there. A two star is about right.

Thomas Erl has an easy to read writing style. Highly recommend this book. - 2009-04-24
Reviewer Rating:
While I agree with some of the other reviewers that this book can be 'long winded' at times, it is still a book with a lot of rich information on SOA technology. It is not a book about how to perform SOA implementation, but contains abstract problems and how SOA solves those problems. Thomas Erl is one of a few technical authors I've found to have a gift of communicating well on paper, and this book's content moves along in a graceful manner. If you are looking for a very technical implementation book on SOA then this is not the right book (though I'd look at some of the author's more recent releases for that). This is not a book to be read quickly, as the author presents the information in a 'beefy' style with a lot of information, some perhaps redundant, but I believe is there to drive home his message. As a software engineer for nearly 30 years, I've read nearly 100 technical books, but I must say that this one (my first one of Thomas Erl's Series) stands out as one of the best. SOA is a very complicated topic, and there is not a short-cut to fully digesting it. I would highly recommend this book to be part of your SOA reference library.

Too much theory - 2007-09-10
Reviewer Rating:
I found reading this book boring after the first 6 chapters. What would have been more interesting is the author giving possible solutions (i.e. specific products) that could meet the specifications he laid out in each chapter. This book does not give specific real-world solutions that fit the descriptions and specifications that are described as constituting a Service-Oriented Architecture. After reading this book, I understand the architecture, but could not recommend any specific products that would fit the architecture.

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