Praise for Service-Oriented Architecture Compass

"A comprehensive roadmap to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA is, in reality, a business architecture to be used by those enterprises intending to prosper in the 21st century. Decision makers who desire that their business become flexible can jumpstart that process by adopting the best practices and rules of thumb described in SOA Compass."

–Bob Laird, MCI IT Chief Architect

"The book Service-Oriented Architecture Compass shows very clearly by means of real projects how agile business processes can be implemented using Service-Oriented Architectures. The entire development cycle from planning through implementation is presented very close to practice and the critical success factors are presented very convincingly."

–Professor Dr. Thomas Obermeier, Vice Dean of FHDW Bergisch Gladbach, Germany

"This book is a major improvement in the field. It gives a clear view and all the key points on how to really face a SOA deployment in today's organizations."

–Mario Moreno, IT Architect Leader, Generali France

"Service-Oriented Architecture enables organizations to be agile and flexible enough to adopt new business strategies and produce new services to overcome the challenges created by business dynamism today. CIOs have to consider SOA as a foundation of their Enterprise Applications Architecture primarily because it demonstrates that IT aligns to business processes and also because it positions IT as a service enabler and maximizes previous investments on business applications.

To understand and profit from SOA, this book provides CIOs with the necessary concepts and knowledge needed to understand and adapt it into their IT organizations."

–Sabri Hamed Al-Azazi, CIO of Dubai Holding, Sabri

"I am extremely impressed by the depth and scale of this book! The title is perfect–when you know where you want to go, you need a compass to guide you there! After good IT strategy leads you to SOA, this book is the perfect vehicle that will drive you from dream to reality. We in DSK Bank will use it as our SOA bible in the ongoing project."

–Miro Vichev, CIO, DSK Bank, Bulgaria, member of OTP Group

"Service-Oriented Architecture offers a pathway to networking of intra- and inter-corporate business systems. The standards have the potential to create far more flexible and resilient business information systems than have been possible in the past. This book is a must-read for those who care about the future of business IT."

–Elizabeth Hackenson, CIO, MCI

"Service-Oriented Architecture is key to help customers become on demand businesses–a business that can quickly respond to competitive threats and be first to take advantage of marketplace opportunities. SOA Compass is a must-read for those individuals looking to bridge the gap between IT and business in order to help their enterprises become more flexible and responsive."

–Michael Liebow, Vice President, Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture, IBM Business Consulting Services

"This book is a welcome addition to SOA literature. It articulates the business case and provides practical proven real-world advice, guidance, tips, and techniques for organizations to make the evolution from simple point-to-point web services to true SOA by addressing such topics as planning, organization, analysis and design, security, and systems management."

–Denis O'Sullivan, Fireman's Fund Enterprise Architect

Maximize the business value and flexibility of your SOA deployment

In this book, IBM Enterprise Integration Team experts present a start-to-finish guide to planning, implementing, and managing Service-Oriented Architecture. Drawing on their extensive experience helping enterprise customers migrate to SOA, the authors share hard-earned lessons and best practices for architects, project managers, and software development leaders alike.

Well-written and practical, Service-Oriented Architecture Compass offers the perfect blend of principles and "how-to" guidance for transitioning your infrastructure to SOA. The authors clearly explain what SOA is, the opportunities it offers, and how it differs from earlier approaches. Using detailed examples from IBM consulting engagements, they show how to deploy SOA solutions that tightly integrate with your processes and operations, delivering maximum flexibility and value. With detailed coverage of topics ranging from policy-based management to workflow implementation, no other SOA book offers comparable value to workingIT professionals.

Coverage includes

• SOA from both a business and technical standpoint–and how to make the business case

• Planning your SOA project: best practices and pitfalls to avoid

• SOA analysis and design for superior flexibility and value

• Securing and managing your SOA environment

• Using SOA to simplify enterprise application integration

• Implementing business processes and workflow in SOA environments

• Case studies in SOA deployment

• After you've deployed: delivering better collaboration, greater scalability, and more sophisticated applications

The IBM Press developerWorks® Series is a unique undertaking in which print books and the Web are mutually supportive. The publications in this series are complemented by resources on the developerWorks Web site on ibm.com. Icons throughout the book alert the reader to these valuable resources.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 10 Ratings

Eye-Opening Reading - 2006-04-21
Reviewer Rating:
I enjoyed the book. It was well-written in clear language, presenting a concise set of principles for a successful SOA strategy.

This book was an eye-opener for me. It presents SOA as something that you grow into. It described SOA in terms of the business benefits that it leads to, namely agility and flexibility. The authors filled the book with wise advice. It opened my eyes to the path that lay ahead of me.

The authors suggest a close working relationship between business process owners and the technical staff. They claim this is a critical foundation for being able to create services which are indeed flexible and lead to business agility.

The 2 case studies at the end of the book could have included more details.

If you're looking ahead for your own SOA development efforts, definitely pick up this book as you plan projects, evaluate staffing needs, design your architecture, and consider
software purchases.

I guess it's decent, but have nothing to compare it to - 2008-10-12
Reviewer Rating:
I felt the book was very vague and redundant. However' I've not read another SOA book so perhaps they are all the same. The editing and such seemed good as well. I bought this book to pass IBM exam 664. While I did pass the exam, I think all you need for this objective are the VW003/005 PDF files from IBM, not this book. THE PDFs are far shorter in length and get right to the points you need to pass the exam, without the added fluff that this book has.

Overall, decent book if you know nothing of the subject, but a bit too much padding for IBM664/669

SOA Roadmap - 2006-09-26
Reviewer Rating:
This new book from IBM Press released in October 2005 provides valuable inputs for someone looking for an authentic source to obtain a roadmap on SOA. Having said that, the 11 chapters present only a high level view of the topics. For instance, it clarifies that SOA is Platform, Protocol and Programming language independent. These and other aspects relating to backward and forward compatibility, the Enterprise Service Bus, the On Demand Operating Environment (ODOE) are all compressed into one chapter, Chapter-3 titled "Architecture Elements". Chapter-4 presents the SOA Adoption Roadmap with a brief set of tips for success which make interesting reading. Chapter-4 also takes a look at existing roles in IS projects and redefines some of them and introduces new ones. The UDDI Designer, UDDI Administrator and the Services Governor are new roles that I found interesting. Chapter-5 deals with Analysis and Design of Service layers through abstraction and how to categorize them. Chapter-6 carries the interesting analysis and design discussion forward and states that finding the correct asset to solve the enterprise architechture problem is difficult. The chapter discusses 2 scenarios with pros and cons and consequences of each approach with diagrams that are good.

I found these 4 chapters (3-6) of the 11 the highlights of the book. I am looking forward to delving deeper into SOA architecture from other books. This book provided a good foundation for understanding SOA.

Highly theoretical, very small practical value - 2007-08-20
Reviewer Rating:
I read this book after reading Enterprise SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices By Dirk Krafzig; Karl Banke; Dirk Slama. That is the best book on SOA in my opinion. So may be I am a little biased, but following are my comments:
1. I found it highly theoretical. It tries to explain a lot of concepts, but does not use practical examples. This is in total contrast to the book I mentioned, which keeps the information interesting and readers can relate to it easily.
2. The case studies sections seem to be done hastily and there is no practical knowledge which you can get from them. They seem to be simple applications of web services. The authors use buzzwords like hub centric architecture etc. to make them look different.
3. Authors use all available opportunities to promote IBM products.

Excellent Reference Book - 2007-06-06
Reviewer Rating:
I enjoyed this book and found a lot of valuable information and insight into SOA concepts and issues.

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