Applied SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture and Design Strategies

APPENDIX B

Evaluating SOA Services

This book discusses the fundamentals of Service-Oriented Architecture, including the design and technical concerns of building SOA services. As stated in Chapter 2, simply having services is not enough; you need the right kind of services, and you need well-designed and properly built services. How do you know if you have the right kind of services or if the services will satisfy the current or future requirements? Is there an objective way to assess services and their alignment with business needs?

This appendix contains an evaluation matrix for assessing the design of SOA services. It consists of four categories: Alignment Characteristics, Design Characteristics, Technical Characteristics, and Housekeeping Characteristics. Within each category, there are several characteristics pertaining to the category and questions to ask about how well the service satisfies that characteristic. The collected answers to the questions in the matrix indicate how well a service fits into an SOA solution.

• Categories group together service characteristics that address specific architectural principles and practices.
• Characteristics are the service dimensions that you evaluate. The goal of the evaluation is to determine how well the service follows the SOA principle or practices. Each characteristic has a brief description and is followed by a list of the outcomes of the evaluation.
• Questions help you evaluate each characteristic. The matrix provides a set of ...