SOA Approach to Integration

I was recently sent a copy of "SOA Approach to Integration" by Matjaz B. Juric, Ramesh Loganathan, Poornachandra Sarang, and Frank Jennings to review from the good people at http://packtpub.com.

It is a good overview of SOA concepts combined with Integration viewpoint. Integration is handled within SOA. SOA is about integration. Process Oriented Architecture was a term that was introduced. POA is about using BPEL to manage business processes with existing services.

All in all, a good review of SOA issues including ESB, WS specifications, XML considerations.


There are 6 chapters:


1.Integration Architecture, Principles and Patterns

Review of different integration technlologies and types of integration
overview of integration challenges, process is important
SOA and its associated technolgies is a valid approach to integration


2.Service and Process Oriented Architectures

POA is centered on the processes that "use" the services while SOA is about"providing" the services.
POA is the approach from the business side of things. It is about business process and main standards include BPEL, WSCI, etc.


3.Best Practices for Using XML for Integration

Review of XML with tops and issues to watch out for.

4.SOA and Web Services Approach for Integration

SOA is not web services but web services are the specification/technology of choice in the arena.
WS applies to both EAI and B2B as well as SOA.
Included some on the specification process.

5.BPEL and Process-Oriented Approach

Familiarization with BPEL and POA together.
With a sample application of BPEL towards a Billing Process

6.Service and Process Oriented Approach to Integration using Web Services

Putting it all together with the Enterprise Service Bus(ESB).
Discussion of the ESB and what it offers for Integration and SOA.

Intro to SOA - InfoClipz

A great video on SOA, no fluff or buzzwords!

Ram Charan's "What The Customer Wants You To Know"

Ram Charan's publisher sent me a copy of his latest book "What The Customer Wants You To Know" which breaks down how to look at Sales and business development. The process illustrated is Value Creation Selling(VCS).

This process where the salespeople lead a multidisciplined team to gather a deeper look at where value can be added for the customer. Whereas the older views of sales competions are trying to beat one another on price alone. This attempts to provide a better picture of customer's needs and how to generate business.

There are 8 Chapters:

1. The Problem of Sales
Today is more competitive and a new way of finding opportunities is required.

2. Fixing the Broken Sales Process
Sales alone cannot do VCS it will require changes with Sales leading the efforts to collaborate with the customer on many levels within the client side and the vendor side.

3. How to Become Your Customer's Trusted Partner
Information is the heart of VCS. Study the customer and the customer's competitors. Know how decisions are made in the customer's organization.

4. The Value Account Plan
The VAP is a template completed by the salesperson to define the value propostion and business benefits the customer can expect to get from it. "A company that is selling value-creating solutions uses value pricing, which is different". Salespeople may have a psychological blockage about premium pricing. They are used to customers driving hard on price--and losing deals because of it" With value pricing, the price can be determined at some point where both the client and vendor benefit.


5. Developing the Value Creation Sales Force
This will require great changes to the Sales force. The salesperson will require affability, conceptualizing problems and solutions, leadership, tenacity and business acumen. Training, communicating successes and measuring progress will be required to ensure that VCS takes successfully.

6. Making the Sale
Once the VAP is made it must be presented carefully to the client. Again, both technical and operational members will be required to provide the appropriate vision to the client.

7. Sustaining the Process
Drive the process with reviews and link compensation to success with VCS.

8. Taking Value Creation Selling to the Next Level
Keep on working with VCS, it is a difficult journey but those who make it will be amply rewarded.


Charan has provided a new look at sales than the old sales funnel approach which is multifaceted which seems to make sense to ferret out newer opportunities in today's highly competitive and complex market. A disciplined and detailed approach should provide the vendor with better ways to serve the client's needs.

John Zachman on EA

John Zachman on EA:

David Linthicum talks SOA

Just thought I would include some clips of David Linthicum talking SOA:

SOA and Enterprise Architecture

I really liked Todd Biske's description of Service Oriented Architecture:

SOA doesn’t replace Enterprise Architecture, it’s simply one view of the enterprise. Today, one could argue that most organizations view the IT landscape as a collection of applications. Efforts like application rationalization or application portfolio management reinforce this notion. So, you could also say that today we have application oriented architectures. The unit of composition is the application. This isn’t flexible enough, as it is too coarsely defined. If we break these applications into smaller units, we now get to service oriented architecture, which I feel is a better way of describing things. Is it the only way? Certainly not.

Also, here are some links on the background of Enterprise Architecture that I think could offer some insight:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb466232.aspx
http://www.enterprise-architecture.info/Images/Documents/Comparative_Survey_of_EA_Frameworks.pps
http://www.bptrends.com/publicationfiles/12-03 NL Enterprise Architectures.pdf
http://www.e-cio.org/lea_presentations/11_models_framework_files/frame.htm

Dynamically updating CSS Style attributes

Just having a little fun with CSS style attributes and came up with a demo page to demonstrate javascript dynamically changing the attributes of some text on the screen.

Click here to see.

The javascript/CSS that makes this happens is:

var DHTML = (document.getElementById || document.all || document.layers);

if (!DHTML) return;
var x = new getObj('divtext');

document.getElementById('divtext').innerHTML = text;
x.style.fontSize = fontsize;
x.style.color = color;
x.style.fontFamily = fontfamily;
x.style.fontStyle = fontstyle;
x.style.fontWeight = fontweight;
x.style.backgroundColor = backgroundcolor;

}

function getObj(name)
{
if (document.getElementById)
{
this.obj = document.getElementById(name);
this.style = document.getElementById(name).style;
}
else if (document.all)
{
this.obj = document.all[name];
this.style = document.all[name].style;
}
else if (document.layers)
{
this.obj = document.layers[name];
this.style = document.layers[name];
}
}




A little break from SOA and EA Frameworks :-)