Architect Consultant blog

I got this book on the second SOA Symposium in Rotterdam from one of the authors (Manas Deb) who happen to give a presentation there on SOA, BPM and EDA. He signed the book, so I have a unique piece :) This book gives you a prefect head start with the Oracle SOA Suite 11g. It explains the concepts of SCA, Database-, JMS- and File Adapter, BPEL, Human Tasks, Business Rules, OSB, Unit test of composite SCA applications, Security, Exception Handling, BAM, Event Delivery Network, SDO and B2B. All these concepts are explained with small tutorial examples. If you want to have in depth knowledge of the SOA Suite, this is not the correct book.

I am currently following the SOA Certified Architect traject at SOASchool and have finished my first module (jippie). For me the reason to be certified are: It gives you a good basis to understand what SOA is all about This way you can put this into better perspective when using or selecting SOA tools like ESB and BPM. I always compare it with learning first Object Orientation before diving into C++ or Java. This way I truely believe you get better (reusable, maintainable) code.   Just that little more focus on the content then by just reading a good SOA book It forces you to really study the material. It helps when planning an architecture roadmap I know that you always get presented the ideal SOA picture, but at least it helps you when you have to define a SOA roadmap. It also helps you where to give attention and what kind of discussions you have to do. This way it will help to change the mindset of developers/designers/architects/business. However the question remai...

I bought this book to get a global overview of the possibilities of SCA, because it is also implemented within the Oracle SOA Suite 11g. It is the first book on the fairly new SCA standard. If you want to get a global overview the first chapter will already do. The next chapters go deeper into the concepts with Java as the example programming language. Chapter 1 - Introducing SCA The book starts with a global introduction of SCA and its place w.r.t. SOA, J2EE, .NET, Spring and distributed computing. SCA focuses on being able to describe assemblies of components which have been written in a variety programming models and protocols . It does not cover presentation and persistency. Within this chapter the main terms are explained: Service , Component , Composite and Domain . Why another standard? Because there are still some issues with J2EE and .NET, namely complexity and reusability. You have to understand a lot of different technologies like JAX-WS, JMS, EJB, ASP.NET, .NET M...

I came accross this article about the question "What happened to SOA?" It is stated that the technical SOA part is a succes but within the whole enterprise it fails (most of the time). It fails most of the time because its still is damn difficult to close the gap between business and IT and SOA does not help either as hard numbers, blogs and experience show. What came to my mind were two things, enterprise architecture must give you control over your IT (applications, hardware and interfaces). If you reach this point, it does not matter how it is setup (SOA may help). As long as you can keep the operational costs low. So make posters and communicate the architecture, something i see rarely done. Projects are too complex and big, so maybe we should start thinking small features/processes and use Agile methologies and start having multidiscipline teams with business representatives in it, instead of staying in the ivory towers of the IT department.

The Agile approach is not new anymore, but still I see problems with trying to do projects the Agile way. What I see: Business plans have to be made with functionality and ROI upfront This does not fit the Agile way (Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation). The ROI is sometimes hard to calculate and what you see are naive numbers just to get the project approved. Furthermore it is a long and costly phase. Of course you have to discuss if a functionality is worthwhile. The business wants to know upfront what the costs are and the needed resources This is because resources (people) need to be reserved and hired. They want to know the investments needed in advance because usually budgets are given each (half) year. A project is divided in several subteams which must be coordinated The teams only communicate in the beginning (for the requirements) and at the end (integration testing). They do not communicate during the project and do not integrate during the project. ...

This post guides you through the installation of the Oracle SOA Suite 11g with JDeveloper 11 with the use of Oracle XE database (for Windows). Note: It is assumed that Oracle XE database is already installed. Required downloads Oracle Weblogic Server 10.3.1   SOA Suite   Repository Creation Utility JDeveloper Studio The detailed steps are nicely described here . The next picture gives a nice overview of the directory structure created. Step1 -  Create Schemas for Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle BAM (RCU) Unzip the files Run bin/rcu.bat At the Database Connection Details fill in the XE details. If you encounter the next fault you have probably not started the XE database.   Ignore all warnings Click OK Select all components I ran into the following problem: When you click Ok you see the following error: And this is about the Processes DB Init parameter that is wrong. To fix this goto the Database Home page, Sql Editor and execute the follo...

Everytime when I see efforts in trying to implement a SOA within an enterprise you see the gap stays between the IT department and the business. It is very hard to sell SOA to the business, even if the concept of Services is close to the mindset of the business. So can Agile development be a good approach? I mean Agile has Customer collaboration as one of its key principles in its Manifesto . I see a lot of big project contracts made which are stopped or constantly changing, so why not collaborate more with the customer (business) and establishing the Services together?! This will perhaps change the gap, and the Agile approach is not only for user interface design as I also hear a lot. Why not for integrating systems and implementing business processes? These processes can also be broken down in small peaces. And why should the business be in different work locations as the IT department? So I think that the Agile approach can be a good way to bringing the business and IT toge...