Java SOA Cookbook

Chapter 11. SOA Governance

Introduction

While this book is predominantly technical, it is also essential to address some non-technical items in order to highlight SOA as a unifying concept. Without considering the non-technical work within the framework of SOA, we are doomed to wind up over-engineering a bunch of software components that could have been written less expensively, more efficiently, and in a more easily maintainable manner. To focus solely on building web services is to miss the point of SOA entirely.

We have been creating web services in the industry for several years, and while the term “SOA” may already be 10 years old, many organizations are still only at the evaluation stage. Gartner research shows that only a small percentage of organizations that self-identify as those doing SOA are actually in a mature stage, meaning that they utilize a wide catalog of reused services in a repository; activity monitoring and automated alerts; brokered ESBs executing under governance domains; rules-based services; solid change management; federated partnering and security; advanced process automation that includes dynamic discovery, binding, and composition; and a complete governance board. Governance can act as perhaps the primary caretaker that helps nurture a fledgling SOA into a mature SOA.

Some of the discussions in this chapter, such as those on return on investment, may seem out of place in a technical cookbook. But SOA brings to the forefront the alignment of software with ...