SOA Patterns

There’s a lot of material and guidance on the Service Orientation (SO of SOA) and the business aspects of SOA, the Architecture (the A of SOA) is regrettably somewhat neglected. This is a shame, since at the end of the day, us,those who are left to actually realize all the  SOA dreams and to somehow build working, robust and viable Systems – and we are missing this guidance.

The SOA Patterns book, aims to fill this gap and provide practical architectural advice and guidance you can use to build services today. I am talking about real services, ones that exhibit quality attributes like flexibility, availability, scalability etc.

I’ve decided to use Patterns and Anti-patterns to describe the solutions to the various SOA challenges. I have come to look at patterns and anti-patterns as one of the best ways to express architectural concerns and solutions. Compared with “best practices” that allegedly always work, patterns and anti-patterns also provide a context for the problem as well as covering the forces and consequences of both the problem and the solution. I’ve also added 2 important sections to each pattern. One that covers technology mapping (which available technologies can be used to implement the pattern and the implications of the mapping) to help bring the patterns down to earth and a quality attribute scenarios section to help identify relevant patterns to challenges you face.

You can use this site to monitor the progress of the book as I write it. Also every now an then I’ll publish here drafts of selected patterns. Additionally you canpurchace the book now trough Manning Early Access Program (MEAP) and get access to the complete chapters as I write them.

If you have any comments or questions, please use the contact form

Chapter 1 is available on the MEAP page. Some of the other patterns are also publicly availble