# 223 SOA Made Simple Chapters 7-10

This is the last leg of this book review. It is the sort of book that I can imagine one ends up delving into off and on - i.e. excellent reference work.

Chapter 7 is titled - Creating a Roadmap - How to spend your money and when?
Here they forgot to add with whom --)

This harks back to the original SOA goal of bridging the business / IT gap. The authors chasten us in to remembering that SOA - "can result in additional technical complexity and organizational challenges". Ok, so they are preaching to the converted - just remember that this has to be explained in the context of the overall value-add of the business case. The chapter contains many scenarios that succinctly illustrate this.

The Roadmap describes the long term plan/goals along with the short term plan/goals that progress us on the way. They mention various forms of work packages -e.g. service by service, process by process, feature by feature etc. As we progress along the way we also become more SOA mature. The authors discuss this and posit 5 stages from Starting with SOA to Maintenance.  Again very useful concepts to leverage in your customer discussions.

Chapter 8 - Lifecycle Management.
...from service identification to service retirement. 
excellent stuff here - the chapter discusses -

- versioning of services
- types of change (contract, interface, implementation) and their implication.
The section on tooling mentions registries / repositories. For more info on Oracle's offering in this space, please see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/repository/overview/index.html


Chapter 9 is titled - Pick your Battles

This covers essentially the area of governance from a variety of perspectives -
- architectural
- development
- ops
- change management

The title is somewhat of a misnomer - because if you follow the authors' suggestions here you probably
will end up pacifying everyone.

Chapter 10 - Methodologies and SOA

There are many methodologies out there from Togaf to Prince, BiSL, ASL etc.
In this chapter, the authors discuss how SOA fits into all of this. It may help you pick up your customer from they are at and show them how easily SOA can fit into their world. Very important for the organizational change aspect of SOA.

That's it - an excellent book - well worth the €.


  

# 222 Oracle Fusion CRM - Querying Customer via Web Services

Here I want to query SalesParty based on
- PartyName
- website
- City
- Country
- Phone Number

it leverages the findSalesParty operation -->
you can, of course, modify to suit your needs.

SOAP Request here

# 221 Oracle Fusion Middleware Partner Community Forum XVI

I attended the above last week in Faro, Portugal. Great event, as usual with Juergen Kress as the master of cermonies. I am always impressed by his organizational skills as well as his dedication and out and out professionalism. Juergen - take a bow!

I ran the 2 day BPM 11g PS6 workshop along with my colleagues David Read and Angelo Santagata.
The feedback from the partners was great - very positive. So I am looking forward to blogging about all the cool new functionality/features which are about to be unleashed.

So watch this space...

#220 Fusion CRM - create a SALES_PROSPECT via web services

Thanks to DonS.

Step 1. create a new address for the prospect using the Location Service.

Use the LocationId returned in the next step. This will be used for the PartySite.

e.g.

 

Step 2. Use the SalesPartyService --> createSalesParty

     

view in Oracle Fusion CRM -

#219 SOA Made Simple 4-6

Continuing my review -

Chapter 4 - Classification of services -

In this chapter the authors go into more detail on Elementary services, Composire Services and Process services and their relationship to the 3 architecture layers - Business, Information and Technology.This chapter also discusses aggregation vs orchestration - and contains many real world examples to illustrate all concepts discussed.

Chapter 5 - The SOA Platform

This chapter discusses the building blocks of a SOA platform - Registry/Repository, ESB, Identity Management, BPM etc.
Please see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/soasuite/overview/index.html
for a description of the Oracle platform.

This is an excellent chapter and prepares one well for looking at implementation and maybe Antony Reynold's book  - Oracle SOA Suite 11g Developer's Cookbook

Chapter 6 - Solution Architectures 

This chapter looks at some of the SOA platforms available - Oracle, IBM, MSFT.
Guess which one comes out on top?

Again the link -

SOA made simple

 

#218 SOA 11G Database Growth Management Strategy

Please see this very useful whitepaper
www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/availability/soa11gstrategy-1508335.pdf

#217 OATS 12c -Application Testing made easy

worth looking at for not just SOA/BPM app testing -

Check it out here

#216 Eloqua update for Oracle CRM partners

Just to remind you...

https://blogs.oracle.com/emeapartnercrmod/entry/live_webcast_oracle_buys_eloqua

#215 Oracle Fusion CRM partner integrations

I have been getting some questions about this recently -
here's a good info source -

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/fusion/customer-relationship-management/fusion-crm-isv-partners-1848280.html

Also worth checking out is the EMEA CRM Partner Community blog -

EMEA CRM Blog


 

#214 SOA Made Simple Chapter 3

This chapter covers Service Identification and Design - essentially identifying what services you already have and which new ones do you need.

The authors introduced the concept of 3 hierarchical architecture layers in Chapter 1 -
Business / Information and Technical. So essentially you end up with services on all 3 levels, which need to be identified and designed.

The section on Service Design succinctly covers all you need to know in respect of interface, contract and implementation design. It deals with concepts such as granularity, reusability, idempotency, isolation etc. - really a great checklist for you to follow.

Again the link -

SOA made simple

#213 SOA Made Simple Chapter 2

Chapter 2 delves into services - answering well the ubiquitous question -
What is a Service?
It then delves into the elements of a service - contract, interface and implementation.
However, the example used - a US diner breakfast service - is not to my taste (get the pun!).
The authors may have been better off with a more mundane example - such as car rental booking.

However, the more implementation oriented examples in this chapter do illustrate & illuminate the concepts discussed. What I like about the chapter, and the book in general, is the fact the authors always answer the Why - i.e. giving us solid business reasons for what they are offering.  

Again the link -

SOA made simple

# 212 SOA Made Simple Chapter 1

as promised, a review of the book - Chapter by Chapter...

Chapter 1 - Understanding the Problem.

Reminds me of - Women are from Venus - Men are from Mars - the mismatch between business requirements and IT infrastructure/implementations.

The authors give a succinct overview of the problem space SOA is addressing.
Process silos - data and functional duplication are the common symptoms of this dichotomy.

They emphasise the role of architecture in addressing this and position SOA within this architectural world.
It details how SOA fits in with Enterprise Architecture, Reference Architecture, Solution Architecture & Project Architecture

Essentially a raison d,être for Service Oriented Architecture.

Again the link...

SOA made simple