SOA Patterns Book Review

I have been waiting for this book for a long time, so the first thing I would like to do is thank Aya, the author's wife. In the acknowledgements the author thanks her for making him man up and finish the book. The second thing I would like to do is thank the author for listening. A project like this had to have been difficult to finish. The wait was definitely worth it. This is an excellent compilation of rock solid architectural advice. Having it delivered in the format of patterns is icing on the cake. The book is broken down into two parts. The first part introduces SOA and then covers the patterns. The second part discusses SOA in the real world. I have listed the chapters and the patterns they include below. At the end of each chapter there is also a Summary and Further reading section which I do not show below. Part 1 SOA patterns Chapter 1 Solving SOA pains with patterns Defining software architecture Service-oriented architecture Solving SOA challenges with patterns Chapter 2 Foundation structural patterns Service Host pattern Active Service pattern Transactional Service pattern Workflodize pattern Edge Component pattern Chapter 3 Patterns for performance, scalability, and availability Decoupled Invocation pattern Parallel Pipelines pattern Gridable Service pattern Service Instance pattern Virtual Endpoint pattern Service Watchdog pattern Chapter 4 Security and manageability patterns Secured Message pattern Secured Infrastructure pattern Service Firewall pattern Identity Provider pattern Service Monitor pattern Chapter 5 Message exchange patterns Request/Reply pattern Request/Reaction pattern Inversion of Communications pattern Saga pattern Chapter 6 Service consumer patterns Reservation pattern Composite Front End (Portal) pattern Client/Server/Service pattern Chapter 7 Service integration patterns Service Bus pattern Orchestration pattern Aggregated Reporting pattern Part 2 SOA in the real world Chapter 8 Service antipatterns Knot antipattern Nanoservice antipattern Transactional Integration antipattern Same Old Way antipattern Chapter 9 Putting it all together—a case study Problem Solution Chapter 10 SOA vs. the world REST vs. SOA SOA and the cloud SOA and big data So what makes this book different from other SOA Pattern books? My take on that is that this one is written by a software architect who is writing to software architects. Yes the book is also appropriate for developers, CIOs, project managers, and testers, but it really speaks to the software architect. The last section of every pattern description contains a quality attributes section. The author calls the patterns a solution and the quality attributes the requirements. Software architecture is all about the quality attributes. They are what help define the scenarios and the trade-offs that need to be made during architectural design. The quality attributes section maps the quality attribute to concrete attributes to a sample scenario. It really helps to highlight the architectural importance of the pattern. If you have never read any of the author's published material, you should also take the time to check that out. His material on software architecture is great. He put together the SPAMMED architecture framework (SAF) which is a set activities that an architect can follow when they design an architecture. If you are not experienced with quality attributes, the author's SAF is a great place to start. Another thing that I really like is that the author includes a technology mapping section with each pattern. Although an architecture can be designed out the specific technology in mind, I usually find that ignoring the technology often leads to an architecture design that isn't specific enough to actually be used. It is also rare and unrealistic to think that you're going to be designing an architecture for an unknown technology. I always know what the environment is that I am going to be implementing in, at least that's been my experience. There may be several technologies used in the same environment, like the mobile environment that I am currently architecting. I do know the environment includes C#, Java, Objective-C, and ASP.NET MVC. I am therefore placing constraints on the architecture based on the fact that all these languages will be used for certain parts of it. One of the coolest parts of the book is the appendix 'From quality attributes to patterns'. The appendix first gives a very nice overview of what quality attributes are. It continues with the section that explains how quality attributes are matched with patterns. There is then a very large table of quality attributes which are mapped to concrete attributes, sample scenarios, relevant pattern, and the chapter but you can be found it. The author's writing style makes this book very easy to read. Each pattern is very well explained and the author makes great use of UML diagrams and other visualizations. If you're going to purchase just one SOA patterns book, you should make it this one. Every software architect should have this book on their shelf.

SOA Patterns

For more book recommendations check out my .NET, iOS, and Java Architecture and Development Book Recommendations for 2013