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SOA Principles of Service Design Thomas Erl. 2008. Prentice Hall (http://www.prenticehall. com). 573 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0-13-234482-1
CSQE Body of Knowledge area: Systems and Software Engineering Processes-Systems Architecture
This book can be summarized as a one-stop refresher for anyone interested in learning principles of a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Practitioners new to the SOA concept will find a wealth of information in the in-depth narrative of the text. The multitude of pictures accompanying various concepts does, in fact, speak a thousand words. The author builds on a case study to help readers understand some of the more abstract terms, which is bound to help a beginner.
More experienced professionals may find the introductory topics rudimentary. They are advised to focus on Part 2 of the material. Even then, several concepts presented in Part 2, for example, coupling, abstraction, and reusability, may appear redundant, given that these themes are at the heart of object-oriented design (OOD). Such readers are reminded that SOA is an extended reincarnation of OOD and one should thus expect this overlap. Part 3 of the book delves into exactly this (that is, a comparison of the two concepts).
Nonetheless, the book weaves in newer concepts (for example, the notion of formal service contracts and meta data) with the more traditional OOD topics, in such a way that it makes for a good bookshelf reference for the more experienced.
All in all, the book does a good job of presenting diverse topics within its covers. The...