Welcome to SOA Governance in Action. The main goal of this book is to introduce you to SOA governance and provide you with a set of guidelines and policies you can use to get started introducing SOA governance to your organization.

The book is divided into three parts. In the first part you’ll be introduced to the theory behind SOA governance and you’ll set up an environment that you can experiment with. In the second and third parts of the book, we look at and discuss various concepts you can use to start governing your SOA.

Audience

This book is intended for software developers and architects who want to better understand SOA governance and use it to create great services.

The focus of this book is on the practical side of SOA governance. It shows you how to apply the principles of SOA governance to your own services and organization. There are many great books published that also cover SOA governance, but none that focus on the practical side of things.

Even though this book has many examples using Java, XML, and JSON, you don’t have to be an expert in these technologies to benefit from this book. If you’ve got a basic understanding of programming, you’ll be able to read the examples and implement them using the technology of your choice.

Experience with SOA, or with governance, is helpful but isn’t required for this book.

Roadmap

This book is divided into three parts:

• In the first part of the book, you’ll get an introduction to SOA concepts and governance tools, as well as the environment and policies that we’re going to discuss.
• In the second part, we look at the policies you can use during the development phase.
• In the last part of the book, we focus on how to work with SOA governance when your services are deployed and running.

The first part consists of the following chapters:

• Chapter 1 starts with an introduction to SOA Governance. It includes a simple explanation of SOA and an explanation of governance. In this chapter you’ll see why SOA Governance is important and what problems SOA governance solves. This chapter also describes how open source tools can help you get started with SOA governance.
• Chapter 2 shows you how to set up a complete SOA governance environment where you can experiment with the examples from this book. This chapter also includes an example of the basic architecture that we’ll use throughout this book for REST and WS-*-based services.
• Chapter 3 presents a scenario that we’ll use throughout the book—a fictional company that provides a number of applications and services to its customers. This company faces a number of problems that we’ll use as input to define a set of policies. In later chapters you’ll see how to use various open source tools to comply with these policies.

The second part contains the following chapters:

• Chapter 4 looks at the policies related to service design and documentation. This chapter will show how you can make your services self-documenting and how to correctly version your services.
• Chapter 5 stresses the importance of taking security into account during the design phase of a project. This chapter explains how tools can help you implement security-related policies such as centralizing authentication and authorization.
• Chapter 6 discusses how testing and SOA Governance work together. You’ll see how you can test all the layers from a service using different tools and technologies. You’ll also see how you can create a service that can easily run in the cloud. For this last example, we’ll use Amazon as the cloud provider.

The last part consists of the following chapters:

• Chapter 7 shows how you can use the Bamos runtime governance environment to monitor your services in real time. It provides a number of examples on how you can visualize key metrics of your service landscape.
• Chapter 8 looks at how a service and a policy both have a lifecycle. You’ll be introduced to a standard lifecycle you can use for services and for policies. This chapter also shows how the WSO2 registry can help you keep track of all the services and policies used in your organization or department.
• Chapter 9 discusses how you can integrate the tools and technologies shown in this book with your existing components and services. It includes examples to get you started in a number of languages and also shows you how to integrate with ESBs and BPM engines.

The appendix contains installation instructions for the tools used throughout the book. If you work through chapter 2, you’ll see references to the appendix on how to install specific components.

Code conventions and downloads

All the code in the examples used in this book is presented in a monospaced font like this. This code, except for the code in chapter 9, is written in Java. Even though Java is used for the code samples, all the concepts that are explained also apply to other languages. For longer lines of code, a wrapping character may be used to keep the code technically correct while conforming to the limitations of a printed page.

Annotations accompany many of the code listings and numbered cueballs are used if longer explanations are needed. Longer listings of code examples appear under clear listing headers; shorter listings appear between lines of text.

The source code for all of the examples in the book is available for download from the publisher’s website at www.manning.com/SOAGovernanceinAction. You can also download the latest sources from the Google code project. How to get the latest code is explained in the appendix.

Software and hardware requirements

The examples in this book use various tools and libraries. Each chapter explains which specific tool is used to implement a policy or show a concept. The appendix explains all the tools that you will need and how to install them. The easiest way to play around and experiment with the examples in this book is by configuring an Eclipse installation. The appendix also explains how to install and configure Eclipse to work with the examples from this book.

Author Online

Purchase of SOA Governance in Action includes free access to a private web forum run by Manning Publications where you can make comments about the book, ask technical questions, and receive help from the author and from other users. To access the forum and subscribe to it, point your web browser to www.manning.com/SOAGovernancein Action. This page provides information on how to get on the forum once you’re registered, what kind of help is available, and the rules of conduct on the forum.

Manning’s commitment to our readers is to provide a venue where a meaningful dialog between individual readers and between readers and the author can take place. It’s not a commitment to any specific amount of participation on the part of the author, whose contribution to the AO remains voluntary (and unpaid). We suggest you try ask the author some challenging questions lest his interest stray!

The Author Online forum and the archives of previous discussions will be accessible from the publisher’s website as long as the book is in print.