SOA-Based Enterprise Integration: A Step-by-Step Guide to Services-based Application [Hardcover]

When I first looked at this book (after opening the package from Amazon), I thought it would be perfect... it's not a hefty 1000-page cookbook... and seemed like it would be just the perfect level of detail to rein in the broad topics into something coherent. In fact, the book does a decent job with the overall picture, but has some major flaws in style, presentation, and bias that renders it a groggy, often un-informing, experience. I stuck with it, because I had no alternative at hand, and a tight timeframe, so I can speak as a reviewer that has actually read the book.

The Good: This book contains a decent overview of SOA components and does tie them together in a good overall picture.

The Bad (part I): This book was written by an IBM Senior Architect. The technical editor for the book is an IBM Architect. The forward was written by an IBM Fellow. The back cover contains endorsements from two IBMers, one of which is the VP for WebSphere Marketing. Much of the book contains unbiased information on industry standards. However, much of the rest of the book is an over-the-top promotion of IBM products. For example, the capstone of this work is the chapter on Enterprise Service Bus. This chapter reads like glossy marketing literature for IBM products at best and like an informertial at worst. That chapter is only 30 pages long, but uses the word "WebSphere" 24 times by my count. Conversely, the non-IBM Weblogic is mentioned exactly 0 times in the same chapter, and rarely throughout the rest of the book. This book calls IBM's WESB "the prime example" of an application server based ESB and goes on to list, in bulletized form, its "features and advantages". In another section, the author states, "IBM offers the most complete product lines in this area."

The Bad (part II): This book is poorly presented. It can't decide if it is a 40,000 ft overview or a detailed description of various technologies. For example, SOAP is covered in 22 short pages. That's obviously not enough for anything more than an explanation of what it is, how it is used, why it's good, and a few examples. Yet the author tries to dive into the structure of a SOAP message to the point of who-cares detail for a book like this. In the 22 pages covering SOAP, for example, the author states FIVE TIMES that if the header element is present, it must precede the body element.

In addition, the author uses a highly verbose and repetitive style. It often seems that about 20% of the book is either telling you what it's going to tell you or telling you what it's already told you. The book could have contained the same amount of useful information in about 200 pages. This overly verbose and repetitive style gives the book a sense that the author, a PhD, does not know how to communicate effectively with lesser intellects and frequently overshoots his simplification. The result is that the work often, but inconsistently, reads a bit like a "for dummies" type of book.

When I first started reading the book, I thought it would be just another SOA book, with lots of fluff/propaganda and little solid material on SOA. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the contents of the book. The book does provide a great overview of SOA and the associated distributing computing technologies such as sockets, RPC, distributed objects, and messaging but, in addition, it provides code examples for each of SOA-based integration patterns, which makes it extremely useful book for practictioning IT professional such as IT Architects and developers.

Furthermore, a very appealing aspects of this book is that it provides a complete description of the SOA and SOA-based integration patterns by addressing gaps in these areas which exists in the current literature. Thus, in addition to describing web services and how to develop them, it contains detailed chapters on the enterprise service bus and integration of mainframe based applications. I especially liked the chapter on the Enterprise Service Bus - I have not found such a comprehensive treatment of the Enterprise Service Bus in any other book on SOA.

In the end, I have learned a great deal from reading this book and I highly recommend this book to any IT professional who is interested in the subject of SOA and Enterprise integration. The book would serve as a great reference for IT architects, senior developers, and IT managers.

Waseem did a great job of explaining the concepts of SOA for a novice, as well as providing the details needed for actual integration efforts, as best as can be done outside the context of the needs of any specific business entity.

Waseem was a colleague of mine, and is a friend. After I received the book from Amazon for the purpose of reviewing, I could find time only recently to go through the pages of this book on a long flight from DC to California. I am extremely impressed with the overall content of the book, as well as the way Waseem presented it; in particular by the way he bridges the gap from concept to practice.

I can relate to the content in this book from my own experience over the years. I have had the opportunity to create enterprise-wide SOA strategy as a lead architect at some of the largest corporations and industry leaders in the world, and led their implementations. Integration has inevitably been one of the essential aspects of these SOA implementations, due to the many mission critical legacy applications and platforms in various line of business at these large corporations, and due to their need to integrate with business partners. These needs for integration spanned a wide variety of hardware platforms (from the largest mainframes to the latest smart phones), many operating systems, a variety of middleware platforms, as well as several application platforms (like ERP systems), all from different vendors. Indeed for some of these corporations, integration is the entry point into SOA, while others could embark on a broader implementation of SOA. I also had the opportunity to conduct reviews of projects at a few other corporations; some of these projects that I reviewed were successful, and some not so successful, for a variety of reasons. This book undoubtedly covers many of the integration techniques needed for successful integration, starting with SOA concepts and related standards, and proceeding to a good amount of detail.

There are just a few details where I might differ, but that pales in comparison to the overall value of the book. I strongly recommend this book to all those who may be interested in integration through SOA. Great job, Waseem!