"This book could be described as an encyclopedia of service design-Erl leaves nothing to chance. Indispensable." -Steve Birkel, Chief IT Technical Architect, Intel Corp. "An absolute pleasure to read...the best SOA book I've read. A book I would recommend to all of my colleagues; it provides much insight to the topics often overlooked by most books in this genre...the visuals were fantastic." -Brandon Bohling, SOA Architecture and Strategy, Intel Corporation "This book is a milestone in SOA literature. For the first time we are provided with a practical guide on defining service characteristics and service design principles for SOA from a vendor-agnostic viewpoint. It's a great reference for SOA discovery, adoptions, and implementation projects." -Canyang Kevin Liu, Principal Enterprise Architect, SAP Americas, Inc. "I liked this book. It contains extremely important material for those who need to design services." -Farzin Yashar, IBM SOA Advanced Technologies "This book does a great job laying out benefits, key ideas and design principles behind successfully adopting service-oriented computing. At the same time, the book openly addresses challenges, risks and trade-offs that are in the way of adopting SOA in the real-world today. It moves away from ivory-tower views of service orientation, but still lays out a strong vision for SOA and outlines the changes necessary to realize the full potential." -Christoph Schittko, Senior Architect, Microsoft "I recommend this book to any SOA practitioner who wishes to empower themselves in making service design real...gives readers the 360� view into service design [and] gives SOA practitioners the depth and understanding needed into the principles of SOA to assist in the design of a mature and successful SOA program." -Stephen G. Bennett, Americas SOA Practice Lead, BEA Systems "SOA projects are most successful when they are based on a solid technical foundation. Well accepted and established design principles are part of this foundation. This book takes a very structured approach at defining the core design principles for SOA, thus allowing the reader to immediately applying them to a project. Each principle is formally introduced and explained, and examples are given for how to apply it to a real design problem. A 'must read' for any architect, designer or developer of service oriented solutions." -Andre Tost, Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM Software Group "There are few references for SOA that give you the nuts and bolts and this one is at the top of the list. Well written and valuable as a reference book to any SOA practitioner." -Dr. Mohamad Afshar, Director of Product Management, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Corporation "A thorough examination of the considerations of service design. Both seasoned SOA practitioners and those endeavoring to realize services can benefit from reading this book." -Bill Draven, Enterprise Architect, Intel Corporation "There are very few who understand SOA like Thomas Erl does! The principle centric description of service orientation from Thomas canonizes the underpinnings of this important paradigm shift in creating agile and reusable software capabilities. The principles, so eloquently explained, leave little room for any ambiguity attached to the greater purpose of SOA. Most organizations today are creating services in a bottoms-up approach, realizing composition and reuse organically. The time is ripe for a book like this that prepares architects for a principle centric approach to SOA." -Hanu Kommalapati, Architect, Microsoft Corporation "Outstanding SOA literature uniquely focused on the fundamental services design with thorough and in-depth study on all practical aspects from design principles to methodologies. This book provides a systematic approach for SOA adoption essential for both IT management and professionals." -Robin Chen, PhD, Google, Inc. "Thomas Erl's books are always densely filled with information that's well structured. This book is especially insightful for Enterprise Architects because it provide s great context and practical examples. Part 1 of the book alone is worth getting the book for." -Markus Zirn, Senior Director, Product Management, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Corporation "A very clear discussion of the subject matter. Provides a good structure that facilitates understanding and readily highlights key points." -Kareem Yusuf, Director of SOA Strategy and Planning, IBM Software Group "I am very impressed. Comprehensive. Educative. This book helped me to step back and look at the SOA principles from broader perspective. I'd say this is a must-read book for SOA stakeholders." -Radovan Janecek, Director R&D, SOA Center, Hewlett-Packard "Very valuable guidance for understanding and applying SOA service design principles with concrete examples. A mu...
Principles of Service Design is an in depth exploration of seven guiding principles to Service Oriented Architecture. This is a great first book to read to gain an understanding of SOA without getting bogged down in the technical details of implementation.
My only quibble with this text is the seventh principle, Service Composability, is indistinguishable from two other principles (Service Reusability and Service Abstraction). The author seems to believe there was a difference but I was at a loss as to what it might have been.
The one chapter of the book I found particularly useful was Chapter 14: Service-Orientation and Object-Orientation: A Comparison of Principles and Concepts as it drove home a lot of the similarities and differences I was picking up as I read through this tome.
The last two chapters, Chapter 15: Supporting Practices and Chapter 16: Mapping Service-Orientation Principles to Strategic Goals were the least useful, simply because the subject matter could be expanded to books in and of themselves (and the companion book SOA Governance by Thomas Erl more than likely covers this subject in excruciating detail).
This book was worth the read to introduce the theory and principles behind SOA. I highly recommend it for anyone wishing to know more about SOA.
This is an excellent introduction to SOA practices, mixing theory and practice in a readable format. The online adjunct is also nice. I look forward to several of the upcoming books in the series. I have been recommending this to many of the folks working with us on SOA projects.