A survival guide in the complex landscape of open source SOA.

about the technology

Service Oriented Architecture, or SOA, has become embraced by many organizations as a means of improving reusability of software assets; providing better alignment between business and IT; and, increasing agility for responding to demands in the marketplace. This is accomplished by breaking individual units of functionality into services that can then be exposed through open protocols and standards.

what's inside

• History and fundamentals of SOA.
• Evaluation criteria for selecting open source SOA products.
• Using Apache Tuscany to create protocol-neutral services:
  • Understanding the Service Component Architecture (SCA).
  • Defining services declaratively.
  • Wiring together of service components.
  • Deployment and production using Tuscany.
  • Developing components using scripting languages.
  • Understanding callbacks and message exchange patterns.
• Business Process Management (BPM) using JBoss jBPM.
• Creating business processes using jBPM.
• Understanding and using tasks.
• Extending and integrating jBPM.
• Service-enabling jBPM using Apache Tuscany.
• Event Stream Processing (ESP) using Esper.
• Understanding ESP and its essential role in SOA.
• Using the Esper Query Language.
• Patterns for filtering and monitoring business events.
• Service-enabling Esper using Apache Tuscany.
• Integrating Esper with jBPM.
• Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) using Apache Synapse.
• Appropriate uses of an ESB in SOA.
• Core features and capabilities of Synapse.
• Using Synapse for service mediation.
• WS-Security, policies and service discrimination using Synapse.
• Complete end-to-end use case demonstrating Synapse in action.
• Business Rule Management using JBoss Drools.
• Role of business rules in SOA.
• Developing rules using the Drools Rule Language.
• Creating user-friendly rules using DSLs and decision tables.
• Using the Guvnor Business Rule Management System (BRMS).
• Exposing Drools as a decision services using Apache Tuscany.

about the author

Jeff Davis is Director of Software Architecture at HireRight. In that capacity, he designed the company's integration platform, and is the SOA evangelist. He has over 15 years of experience in software development, with an emphasis on enterprise architecture and integration.