Enterprise SOA

What are the core values of ESA?

At this point in technology development, the idea of SOA is far better developed than the actual technology in the field of SOA. Many solutions that are implemented in the real world of IT cannot take full advantage of all of the elements discussed in this book because the right tools, technologies, and infrastructures are not yet available. This does not make the applications any less valuable; it just means that they perhaps were harder to build or that they make certain compromises that won't be required in the future. Many of the examples we will discuss in this book fall into this category. When we discuss them, we will point out how the application lives up to the core values of ESA, even if the technology falls short of the ideal. But what are the core values of ESA?

The core values of ESA represent the themes that run through ESA that are present in almost every application and technology we will examine:

• Managing complexity, usually through enterprise services but also in other ways, is perhaps the most frequently recurring theme of ESA.

• Simplifying development, frequently through modeling and patterns, is another important theme.

• Promoting reuse happens through mechanisms such as the Enterprise Services Repository.

• Improving productivity occurs through expanded automation and role- and pattern-based UIs.

• Increasing flexibility is based on model-driven development of applications and reusable services.

• Promoting differentiation occurs because existing ...