SOA Source Book, 2nd Edition

The OpenGroup recently released the 2nd Edition of their SOA Source Book. The SOA Source book is a collection of materials for enterprise architects working with SOA. It explains:

• what SOA is
• how to evaluate SOA features in business terms
• how to model SOA
• how to use TOGAF for SOA
• SOA governance

The free HTML version of the document can be found here.

SOA Manifesto Released

The SOA Manifesto was recently released at the 2nd International SOA Symposium in Rotterdam. It states what the author's (and signatories) belief to matters more for a successful SOA, out of two good things. It also goes on and provides principles that explain and expand upon those core values. This approach very much follows the format used for the Agile Manifesto.

A recording of the announcement of the SOA Manifesto is available online here.

SOA is re-emerging, says Gartner

As recently announced "SOA is emerging from the Trough of Disillusionment within Gartner's Hype Cycle, and it is climbing the Slope of Enlightenment". Which is obviously good news.

Factors contributing to this resurgence are:

• The evolution of SOA beyond its clasical RPC-style (SOAP), on to REST, Web-oriented architecture and EDA
• SOA's enabling role in SaaS, BPM and Cloud Computing, which are currenlty increasing in popularity and adoption
• Underway SOA initiatives being accelerated, because of users wanting the benefits of SOA sooner.
• Unplanned adoptions of SOA resulting from deploying and using new packaged applications built with SOA

It recognizes that "Good engineering principles such as those embodied in SOA are timeless," as Jeff Thompson said in the Gartner report.

Presentations From The Microsoft SOA/BMP Conference 2009 Available

Both slides decks and videos from the presentations at the past 2009 Microsoft SOA & BPM Conference are now available here.

ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP October 2008 available

There is now a CTP available for a new release of the ESB Guidance 2.0.

The final release date will coincide with the release of BizTalk 2006 R3

Presentations Decks From The Microsoft SOA/BPM Conference 2007 Now Available

All the presentation decks from the recent SOA & BPM Conference 2007 can now be downloaded from the conference download page in PDF format.

Microsoft ESB Guidance for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 finally released

They confirmed it both at the SOA & BPM Conference 2007 as well as at TechEd 2007 Europe. The long awaited release of the ESB Guidance was supposed to be out by now.

Yet even now only the CTP3 release is announced at the CodePlex site.

Only on this discussion thead I learned that the bits for the (final) RTM release could already be downloaded from here.

Sessions back thoughts

I'm home now after a good flight back from Seattle.

Yes, I know I didn't blog during the congress as planned. But it was kind of busy... Anyway, it's midnight now and thanks to my jet-leg I get to catch up on that.

Generally speaking it was a good congress, with lots of interesting stuff.

In perspective, the most interesting news was the official announcement of Oslo. It was positioned as the future technology in the SOA product offering of Microsoft. It encompasses all the products and probably will drive the introduction of new ones. A key point here is the emphasis placed on modeling which should be supported by a new repository technology that will show up. Almost all their software will interact with this repository while still using the products native interface. Next to that there will also be some generic software that will allow us to look at the repository at a higher level of abstraction, using DLS's and query languages. They showed off a concept version of this and it looked awesome.

The sessions I took and found great were:

• Platforms for SOA: Comparing .NET and Java (FT203), by David Chappell. As usual, his session was both enlightening and entertaining. It pointed me to the Java equivalent for WCF (SCA), Workflow (BPEL), etc.
• BizTalk adapters for WCF: Deep Dive (FT400), by Aaron Skonnard. This guy is from training company Pluralsight clearly walked through the WCF adapters in BizTalk 2006 R2 and actually showed how to work with them. Demo here.
• How everyone should test their BizTalk solutions (FT306), by Darren Jefford. This is the first author of great Professional BizTalk Server 2006 book. Great presentation on testing tools BizUnit, BizTalk LoadGen 2007, Orchestration Profiler and PerfMon Counter spreadsheet
• Robust error handling for BizTalk solutions (FT201), by Matt Meleski. This guy presented on error handling using MOM and using the exception handling block from the ESB Guidance package.
• ESB Guidance architecture (SA400) and Building solutions (IA400), by Marty Wasznicky.
• Advanced orchestration concepts & best practices (SA304), by Stephen Thomas. This is the guy running the BizTalkGurus.com community site.
• Identifying & avoiding anti-patterns in your SOA solutions (SA307), by John Callaway. I tended to disagree with many of his points, I guess because of the black or white way he put on those issues. But the guy is a great presenter, off course.

I couldn't get to the following sessions:

• Web service software factory: driving consistency & best practices in your service design (FT206), by Don Smith. The session was running in parallel with John Callaway's session.
• Building a service monitoring infrastructure with BizTalk BAM (IA300), by Jon Flanders. When I got there the room was full. No standing allowed.

I attended other sessions wich I liked less. But hey! it was fun there.