Some SOA Resources

I thought that a good place to start with a first post would be a pointer to some resources on SOA. All of the material below is available for free, but has worthwhile content - a nice combination.

The list is not a top 10, nor is it the complete, all you'll ever need to know kind of list. Just some things that I thought would be of value for someone looking for more info on SOA. If you have suggestions on other things that are worth taking a look at, add a pointer in the comments.

Here goes:

Smart SOA Tutorial: The SOA Marketing team put this together before I came on. It’s a nice interactive app that introduces Smart SOA. If you haven't looked at the Smart SOA materials in the past, it’s a nice high level façade on a continuum of projects/maturity for SOA. It maps nicely to the SIMM model - and also provides guidance on how the SOA Entry Points fit into such a maturity model.

If you want to go beyond simulations/tutorials, check out the IBM SOA Sandbox. The Sandbox provides a hosted set of IBM SOA products that you can try along with a set of associated tutorials. Nice to be able to give the products a try, experiment and learn without having to download, install and configure.

If you're looking to find out more about the development of SOA solutions, a Redbook that I would recommend (although I'm biased) is: Building SOA Solutions using the Rational SDP.

Let me know if you have questions about these materials, or if you need pointers to materials on different aspects of SOA.


Lee.