Upcoming SOA Architect Summits

I've been working with a number of SME's from across IBM in updating the SOA Architect Summit. We had our first delivery with the new content earlier this week in Sacramento. All reports in so far indicate that it was a very successful day - content and speakers were great, and customers that attended found that it was an excellent decision to attend.

We have two more Summits scheduled for the quarter - one in Ottawa (Feb 24th) and another in Pittsburgh (Mar 10th). Additional summits will be scheduled at additional locations world-wide through the remainder of the year.

The links above will guide you to the registration and agenda pages for the two upcoming deliveries. Note that we've also created a customizable agenda for the event - so you'll see that there are some differences in the sessions offered and flow at each location.

The event is free to attend - and the content focuses on discussing the aspects of architecting a successful SOA solution within an enterprise. This is an educational offering first and foremost - our goal is to help highlight the issues, nuances and details an architect will deal with in creating their solutions.

Lee.

SOA Sandbox - WebSphere Application Server Community Addition

As an update to my earlier post regarding the SOA Sandbox wanted to share that a new trial and associated exercise focusing on WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE) has been made available.

WAS CE is a light-weight, freely available Java EE 5 application server - based on the Apache Geronimo project. Typically we'd look to use WAS CE where the focus for the project is on simplicity and cost - looking to move to more advanced application servers (WebSphere Application Server) as security, scalability and manageability become more important.

In summary the exercise: "demonstrates how a developer can build, deploy and test dynamic web applications using WebSphere Application Server Community Edition v2.1 (WAS CE) and Eclipse. You will leverage Eclipse Galileo to setup, deploy, and test a web services application against WAS CE. In addition, you will also explore the capabilities of the Eclipse Web Services tool for generating web services, as well as embedded tooling in WAS CE that aid in creating WSDL files and source."

The exercise is in the section of the Sandbox focused on the SOA Reuse Entry Point.

Again - with this being in the Sandbox - no need to download or configure the application server nor the development tooling. Quick and easy to get going - and available for free. A great way to gain hands-on experience and learn more about creating SOA solutions.

Lee.

Smart SOA Sage

We've made the Smart SOA Sage available up on the IBM.com/SOA site earlier today. It's an interactive conversation - for those new to SOA or looking to learn more.

It'll run in your web browser and is quick to go through - and not only is it educational - but its amusing as well.

It has been a long winding road to get the Smart SOA Sage out (lawyers....don't ask) - but we're excited to get the conversation out there. Give it a try - and pass along the link to any others you think might value (or be amused) by the Sage.

I'd be interested in any comments you have on the Sage.

Lee.

SOA Sandbox - getting started with SOA

Regardless of the topic - the best path to learning is usually through hands-on experience. To read about a topic or have someone else describe it - while useful - is no replacement for getting your hands dirty. In looking at SOA this can be a challenging situation as there can be multiple development and runtime tools that need to be downloaded, installed and configured before getting started with any experiential learning (unless the goal is to learn about downloading, installing and configuring).

A useful alternative is to check out the SOA Sandbox. The SOA Sandbox is a cloud-based offering from IBM. The goal is to provide a way to get started with the SOA Entry Points and the associated set of IBM Products and Best Practices. By being cloud-based - there's no need to download any tools or runtimes (although there is a small Citrix plug-in download).

Once in the Sandbox, there are simple hands-on guided exercises. Its a great way to explore, learn and experience tools. Some of the tools available include: WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Business Events, WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus, WebSphere Process Server, Rational Application Developer, and WebSphere sMash (here's the complete list)

The Sandbox takes things further by including access to an Information Center - which contains documentation on Best Practices and architectural guidance. This includes whitepapers, decision guides, technical presentations and demos.

The Sandbox is available 24/7 and is free. Exercise trials are available in 4 hour windows.

Seems to me, that this is a great way to learn about SOA as it reduces the typical hassles involved in getting set up - while incorporating guidance and exercises.

Lee.

Clouds, SOA and Aging

Well, I haven’t quite reached the stage of yelling at kids to get off my lawn – but I might be getting close.

I attended a session at Impact titled: “Delivering Strong Services: SOA to the Cloud” – delivered by Daryl Plummer from Gartner. Was the first time that I’ve had the chance to see Daryl in person and enjoyed his presenting and the ideas he discussed.

If you attended Impact, you can log in and download the slides – look for session 3097 (or search by the title).

I don’t plan on regurgitating the entire presentation, but did want to discuss a couple of ideas that were a part of the session.

The first is the idea of scalability versus elasticity. I’ve seen this discussed in a number of places and presentations related to Cloud solutions. When I see the reference to elasticity I think in terms of being to scale up or down as needed. I.e. the solution is able to stretch to meet the needs related to the current (and changing)workload. So I find it odd to see discussions of cloud where it is mentioned that cloud provides scalability and elasticity – seems redundant to me. Have I misinterpreted the meaning of elasticity?

More specific to the session at Impact, there was a discussion on the idea of Cloud Service Brokerages that provide service intermediation or service aggregation (for example). As I listened to the presentation my thoughts wandered to the idea of an ESB and viewing these brokerages as essentially providing ESB like services to a number of customers. The would be an EESB – an extra-ESB – and following on that line of thinking starting to see myself thinking in terms of inter, intra and extra cloud based solutions and drawing parallels to how we saw focus on internet use and capabilities evolve over the years.

And hence the aging comment – seems that after you’ve spent enough years in IT you start to relate everything back to what you’ve seen previously. So here I am, in my advanced years thinking – this cloud stuff is just repeating the cycle of thinking that we experienced in inter/intra/extra-net roll-outs. Back in my day…

Lee.

New article published

A new article, “Model Driven Development Misperceptions and Challenges”, that I’ve co-written with Bertrand Portier has been posted recently on InfoQ. 

Models, abstraction and simplification are key tools to have available as you look to successfully create and deliver solutions – whether that is figuring out the processes for the business, the enterprise architecture, or the internal details of a specific software solution.   

Lee.

Where are you going?

As we look to succeed with SOA, we need to realize that there is more to such an effort than just looking at services, service-orientation or architecture.

Before digging deeper, here's a couple of quotes that I'm fond of and are applicable to the discussion:

"If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." Lewis Carroll

"If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there." Yogi Berra

Both quotes highlight to me, the importance of understanding what it is that you are trying to accomplish. Without this understanding, you will most likely not find what you are seeking.

As we look at SOA, WOA, ROA, and all the other acronyms and shiny technology - we need to understand the objectives and goals of what we are trying to accomplish. Where are we going? We need to look at the business – what is it that the business is trying to accomplish? What is most important to the company? And conversely, what’s not important? How could we better compete? How can we better serve our customers? How can we operate more efficiently? How can we become more agile and better react to our environment?

The answers to such questions become our guiding points. They help us in figuring out our objectives and goals – and we then determine what is the best approach to solving these problems. We have a target, we know what is important, and where we are headed. Once we have this in place, we can start to look at how the available solutions can help us in solving our problems. How could we succeed otherwise?

SOA Architect Summit

One more resource that I wanted to point out today is the SOA Architect Summit. These events are delivered worldwide - and provide a great opportunity to hear from some technical leaders from within IBM on topics that would interest the SOA Architect community.

The next Summit is being held on the 29th in Minneapolis. If you're interested in attending, you can still register.

Lee.

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.