Preface

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural style for distributed computing that promotes the use of discrete software modules, known as services, which interoperate to deliver larger software solutions. The main goal of SOA is to deliver value to the business by bridging the gap between business and IT to maximize business benefits. To do so, SOA architectures adhere to a series of guiding principles such as the ones described in the SOA Manifesto (www.soa-manifesto.org).

Although the potential behind SOA has never been questioned, costly lessons learnt have indicated that, without rigorous governance upfront, the chances of SOA delivering value are remote. Moreover, many concluded that the challenge of implementing SOA does not reside in the intrinsic complexity of its underlying technology platform. It was recognized that the real complexity of SOA lies in aligning people and processes from different lines of business in order to deliver enterprise-wide solutions.

What is Governance in relation to SOA? Although this is a very common question among practitioners, you are likely to be presented with several different answers depending on who you ask. However, the real question is not really what it is, but what it means to an organization and what benefits it can bring to a business. How can it be successfully implemented, and what tools and processes are required to achieve it?

SOA Governance is a commonly misunderstood term and is often confused with other disciplines such as Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), configuration management, and naming standards. In practice, although SOA Governance covers all of these concepts, its scope is broader and covers everything from planning, analysis, service discovery, design, build, and testing stages of a SOA Solution (Design-time Governance), to live operations and monitoring (Run-Time Governance).

This book defines SOA Governance as the interaction between policies (what), decision makers (who) and processes (how) (SOA Governance: Framework and Best Practices – An Oracle Whitepaper: http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/soa/oracle-soa-governance-best-practice-066427.pdf).

A SOA Governance implementation can only be successful if it can realize measurable benefits for the business and Return on Investment (ROI). Failing to do so basically means that SOA will be seen as a complex and expensive technology, and not as an architectural style aimed at delivering business benefits.

In reading this book, SOA practitioners will embark on the journey of implementing SOA Governance (what-how-who) using the Oracle SOA Governance Solution. This will be achieved by walking through the common problems that different organizations face when implementing SOA, and how these can be solved by implementing best practice processes, standards, and other techniques, along with using the Oracle Governance Solution toolset.

The components that build up the Oracle SOA Governance Solution infrastructure are depicted in the following diagram:

The components are as follows:

While there appears to be many different definitions and perceptions of SOA Governance in the SOA community at large, leading to much confusion around the subject matter as a whole, there is one common denominator shared by all SOA practitioners. All Service Orientated Architecture implementations are doomed to failure without implementing at least some level of governance.

This book presents the concepts, guidelines, and tips required for the successful implementation of design-time and runtime SOA governance using the Oracle SOA Governance Solution.