Service Oriented Architecture For Dummies®

Chapter 4. SOA Sophistication

In This Chapter

• Making SOA happen

• Leaving the driving to the ESB

• Registering your SOA components

• Revving up your workflow engine

• Cutting a deal with service brokers

• Putting the SOA supervisor to work

• Service guaranteed

• The end is in the beginning

If you've been dutifully following along, reading all about Web services and business processes and composite applications, you may have already noticed that (so far) we do a pretty good job of hiding the gnarly bits of intricate technology that make all this possible. We think, however, that you may still need to know the critical components that make SOA SOA, so we carry on.

In this chapter, we introduce the major components of a service oriented architecture. This is the appetizer chapter. Many components are so important that they (later) get entire chapters of their own, but we introduce them here to show them in relationship to each other and to help you with "the big picture."

Making SOA Happen

We show major components of a service oriented architecture in Figure 4-1. The enterprise service bus (ESB), the SOA registry, workflow engine, service broker, SOA supervisor each have a role to play, both independently and with each other. The ESB makes sure that messages get passed back and forth between the components of a SOA implementation. The SOA registry contains important reference information about where the components of a SOA are located. The workflow engine provides the technology to connect people to people, ...