Customer Reviews

SOA with .NET (The Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl)

5 star:		(6)
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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Like the other Thomas Erl-branded SOA books, this one is a very high-level, pattern-based overview of SOA combined with some specific technology. Like the other books, it's mostly devoid of details or advice, instead relying on a litany of copied Erl-branded patterns, large fonts, graphics, and simplistic examples to convey the author's message. All of the SOA material is copied from the other Erl books, and the information on Azure and WCF is so generic and introductory that it could have been written by someone with no subject matter experience. Each simplistic section copied from the other books is then given a simplistic .NET example to tie the two together. (Hence the claims about explaining the intersection between Erl's brand of SOA and .NET.)

Like the other books, I'd say this one is suitable for a technology manager or maybe a junior architect. It's not informative or complex enough for a working architect or developer. It doesn't give any design principles or take any stands; it just references the extraordinarily vacuous Erl patterns as if they actually were something more than ten pages of diagrams explaining one sentence. Likewise, the treatment of SOA, WCF, and Azure is too superficial to really educate anyone looking to create a solution.

If the Erl SOA series is to SOA what a fast-food commercial is to nutrition, then this book would be a fast-food commercial with some nutrition details about one particular chain's french fries and hamburgers.

It's not entirely useless, but you'd get just as much information from one article on SOA and the introduction to any book on WCF or Azure. Unless you're very green, you won't learn anything from it, but at least you read a 900 page book instead of watching some idiotic "reality" show or fake news program.

Much has been authored about .NET technologies and with the new Azure framework there are many more angles to approach and consider .NET as an enterprise platform for building enterprise systems. But there is nothing out there about how to actually build proper services and SOA with .NET services on-site and cloud-based. This book tackles this difficult subject matter by going deep into topics that demonstrate SOA in action.

The book begins with general coverage of the latest Microsoft products, but really doesn't get into details. If you are new to the world of Microsoft, you should read Microsoft Press books first before starting with this book because it is really about using .NET classes and systems in relation to SOA. This book is not a tutorial about SOA and it is not a tutorial about .NET. It is about using .NET to build SOA services.

The second part of the book talks about principles and patterns as they can exist with .NET. Here you need to understand the principles and patterns, but there are appendixes that provide some reference materials. This second part can get complex and there are inconsistent examples because it is not a tutorial but a book about where SOA and .NET meet.

The third part of the book has interesting chapters that cover things like performance, enterprise service bus, business activity monitoring and UI design. Here again you will encounter principles and patterns but not as much as in the second part. The book is thorough and complete but be sure to pay attention to the prerequisites. Also, the book website is very good.

This book is a must have for anyone that wants to know what Microsoft technologies have to offer to accomplish Service Oriented Architecture.

If you are a .Net Enterprise Architect, this book should not leave your side. It covers all the right ways to accomplish distributed application architecture and enterprise integration using .Net technologies.

It is a book for both the beginner and the experienced. It covers SOA fundamentals in the beginning of the book as well as a history of legacy .Net distributed technologies. I enjoyed reading the history chapter. It brought back a lot of memories of COM+ and .NET remoting issues, which made me happy to be be using WCF.

The book does a great job of covering WCF and WCF Extensions. After two chapters on WCF, it then covers .NET Enterprise Services Technologies. They include SQL Server, Windows Workflow, Application Blocks and Software Factories, and Biztalk Server. The book does a great job of showing why, when, and where you would consider using the technologies.

There are several chapters on how to accomplish service orientation. Topics include Service Contracts, Interoperability, Coupling, Abstraction, Discoverability, Reusability and Agnostic Service Models, Service Composition and Orchestration Basics, Orchestration Patterns with Windows Workflow, and Orchestration Patterns with BizTalk Server.

There also several chapters on Infrastructure and Architecture. Topics include Enterprise Service Bus, AppFabric Service Bus, SOA Security, Presentation Layers with .NET, Performance Optimization, and SOA Metrics.

The book ends with several very helpful Appendices. They include an Industry Standards Reference, Service-Orientation Principles Reference, SOA Design Patterns Reference, and the Annotated SOA Manifesto.

I found the coverage of topics in this book to be just at the right level for introducing them, and then showing how they fit into the .NET SOA environment.

I will always have this book with me. It will not leave my side. It contains all the topics I need to consider when doing enterprise architecture. It will serve as a great one stop shop for solutions and ideas.

My only disappointment was that it was in black and white. I own the SOA Design patterns book which is in full color. With the type of diagrams in these books, color does make a big difference in ease of reading and understanding them. It would have been worth paying an extra $10-15 bucks for the book in color.

My other gripe is with Amazon. I had this book in hand for weeks because I ordered from the publisher before Amazon even had it available. Not sure where that went wrong, but it is no ding to the book.

I am counting both of my dings against the publisher and not against the book.

All in all you must buy this book if you are building applications with .NET in an enterprise environment. Even if you are building stand alone applications this book is worth reading. It has a ton of valuable information presented in a way that makes it unique to this book.

To be honest, this is one of the worst technical book I've ever read. 800+ pages filled with superficial intro into SOA, high-level generic description of SOA patterns and principles, tens of large but in most cases totally useless figures, and bunch of appendixes that works more like text fillers than useful additions to main text.

I'm really disapointed, because I had so high expectations. After reading 5 books about WCF and 2 other about WF I was looking for a book that gives me a list of SOA patterns and shows me how to apply them in right context on tens of examples and case studies. I was looking for a book that gives me a new ideas, new views on SOA and presents them in practice. Unfortunatelly this book was very poor choice.

The biggest problem with this book is the fact that even after reading it I can't say for who this book was written for. First third (about 250 pages) contains overview to SOA, WCF, WF and other SOA related technologies on .NET platform. If book was written for architects, there were no need to have such long introduction. Technologies like WCF or WF are essential when you want to develop SOA services under .NET. 250 pages intro is simply not enough to present these complex technologies. Two or more books are needed - at least. So reading couple of books about WCF, WF and other technologies is in fact prerequisite when you want to read book aimed at architects. But if you know these technologies, there is no need to read another 250 pages intro. This part shold have maximum 100 pages with references to other books and resources where these technologies are described in more detail and rest of pages could have been used for presentation of SOA priciples.

SOA patterns - second third of the book was my biggest disappoint. Book presents maybe 50 or more patterns, but many of them (maybe most) without any sample or case study. In many cases patterns are presented just in 'raw' text with large half to one page sized figures or screenshots that many times show the same idea that has already been presented in the text. For instance what is the point of half size figure containing square divided into 4 parts with labels Functional, Technology, Programmatic, Quality of Service with circle in the middle labeled with text Service, when list with these terms was presented on previous page ? I can't find out what such figure can add to discussion. And speaking about patterns, there are literally hundres of references to Appendix D, where the same patterns are presented in table form - 1 page for 1 pattern. In many cases explanations in this middle part doesn't contain more info than brief description in Appendix D.

Last third contains chapters about ServiceBus, Security, Presentation layer and one useful but just 70 pages long chapter about optimalizations. With exception of this last chapter rest of them is just another intro into these topics.

From all Appendices the only last one about cleaning resources in WCF was useful. Rest of them were added (I guess) just to have thicker book...

Conclusion. The book is one big disappointment. There are just very few useful or interesting chapters (early one about legacy technogies in an example). In fact my favourite chapter 19 about optimalization, containing many examples an use cases is an example how the whole book should have been written.

If you want to understand SOA under .NET Juval Lowy's Programming WCF is much better choice. Lowy doesn't just teach you WCF, but also gives you a hundreads of advices and ideas how to write and design SOA services in proper way.

This book is a testament to how services are maturing in the technology space and, in particular, in the Microsoft technology space. There are many parts of this book that are unique and that you won't find in other books covering Microsoft technologies. The book provides the most in-depth discussion of services with .NET technologies that I have seen and has several chapters only about service orientation approaches as applied to Microsoft .NET technologies. There is also good coverage of Windows Azure and Appfabric products - both introductory coverage and also in relation to how these products work with SOA and principles. This book is highly recommended.

A "big" disappointment, and by "big" I'm using a double entendre. The size of the book and the size of my disappointment. I thought this book would bring a lot of valuable insights into building a SOA with .NET, but instead it was a basic introduction into Microsoft's distributed technologies. It treated too many topics far too superficial. If you have any experience writing WCF services and the Thomas Erl book on SOA Design Principles then save your money. If you don't have the SOA Design Principles then I suggest buying that book instead and figuring out how you apply these principles to .NET by some other means.

Excellent read, covering loads of aspects on Service Oriented design in general and Windows Azure platform in specific. This book is a must read for solution architects moving to or operating in the .Net cloud computing area. For the not so SOA seasoned architect as myself this book has more than enough explanation and references on the basic SOA principles.

There's no better way to learn WCF than using servce-orientation principles. So long I have been waiting for this book. After this book, the other WCF book look like printed documentation. Congratulations to the authors!

SOA with .Net & Windows Azure: Realizing Service-Orientation with the Microsoft Platform provides a technical, in-depth guide to building service-oriented solutions with Microsoft .net technologies and the Windows Azure Cloud Computing platform. From design paradigms and principles unique to SOA to orchestration patterns and service optimization, this is an outstanding, top reference and a 'must-have bible' packed with technical expertise programmers must have.