Software Pipelines and SOA: Releasing the Power of Multi-Core Processing (Addison-Wesley Information Technology Series) (Paperback)

by Cory Isaacson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
“There are some books that tout vision but provide no pragmatic, hands-on details. Software Pipelines and SOA offers a dose of both. Isaacson is an authority and practitioner, who understands that the promise of SOA is not fulfilled simply by embracing an architectural style of loosely coupled, network-based services but in how the applications and services that support this architectural style are developed and deployed. This book will help support a pragmatic approach to SOA.”
—Dan Malks, VP, Partner Engineering, JackBe

"Software Pipelines uncovers a new and unique way of software design for high-performance development. Where other methodologies and frameworks have previously been describing the problem, Software Pipelines is focusing on the solution. Simply put, Software Pipelines addresses the developer’s needs for parallel computing and uncovers the throughput offered by multi-core processors.”
—Filip Hanik, Senior Software Engineer, SpringSource, Inc.

 “. . . it provides insights on how to effi ciently realize scalability on and across multi-core machines in a predictable manner using patterns derived from the best practices in distributed computing and SOA. Written in a conversational manner, one of the pioneering technology leaders of our time provides keen insights on how to build scalable software solutions.”
—Ravi Palepu, SOA Consultant and Founder of PREDICT

“Software Pipelines paves the road in distributed, SOA, high-performance computing in theory and practice with strong technical background, elegant architecture, and a usable implementation. A revolution in grid computing and service-oriented architecture.”
—Nicole Nemer, Ph.D., Superior Consulting

“Multi-core computing offers a unique opportunity to deliver dramatic scalability in modern business applications; but the task is not an easy one, presenting signifi cant challenges to the software developer. Software Pipelines provides an easy-to-implement, concrete strategy that enables service-oriented applications to really deliver on the promise of this new hardware paradigm. A must read for any developer or architect stepping up to the challenge of highperformance business transaction processing.”
—Henry Truong, Chief Technology Offi cer, TeleTech, Inc.

“Isaacson offers a fresh approach to componentize and parallelize software applications in a way that is easy to debug and easy to maintain. Using the high-level abstraction of Software Pipelines, development managers need not worry about the complexities of concurrent programming or the challenges in dealing with maintaining threads, interprocess communication or deadlocks. Any software architect dealing with performance and scalability issues with complex transactional fl ows must consider the Software Pipelines design paradigm.”
—Venkat Pula, Field Application Engineer, Telelogic, an IBM Company

“Cory has captured the power of simplicity, enabling business software applications to exponentially leverage the capacity and capabilities of today’s advanced chip architectures. Using Software Pipelines, corporate IT groups are able to manage, control and fully utilize the power of multi-core computing to improve scalability and reduce long-term costs.”
—Jim Hogan, Cognify, Vice President, Managed Services

“Having projects architected to gracefully scale from a single multi-core box all the way to a cluster of thousands of machines is the new reality. With Software Pipelines, the development organization can easily architect every project—from the summer intern’s toy prototype to your flagship technology—as though it might need to scale for worldwide consumption. Embrace this change now and the day you need that scalability will be your biggest success. Ignore it and it will likely be your greatest failure.”
—Jackson Gibbs, CTO, Strands

Build Breakthrough Performance into Any SOA or Advanced Computing Application

To meet unprecedented demand, IT organizations must improve application performance by an order of magnitude. Improving performance is even more crucial in SOA environments, which demand far more computing power than older architectures. Today’s multi-core servers can deliver the performance businesses require, but few applications take full advantage of them. Now, software innovator Cory Isaacson introduces an easier, more flexible approach to parallel processing—one that any IT organization can use to attain unprecedented levels of performance. Isaacson shows how Software Pipeline models can help you scale applications to any level required, maximize resources, deliver on challenging objectives, and achieve unprecedented ROI. He illuminates these techniques with real-life business scenarios and proven design patterns—everything architects, analysts, and developers need to start using them immediately.

This book’s in-depth coverage includes

•     How Software Pipelines work, what they can accomplish, and how you can apply them using the Software Pipelines Optimization Cycle (SPOC)
•     Scaling applications via parallel processing while guaranteeing order of processing in mission-critical applications
•     Solving performance problems in existing applications, and resolving bottlenecks in existing processes
•     A complete, easy-to-adapt Pipelines Reference Framework
•     Detailed code examples reflecting proven Pipelines Patterns
•     Techniques that can be applied in any industry, with any programming language
•     Specific architectural and design solutions for common business and technical challenges
•     The future of Software Pipelines: emerging opportunities for “greenfield” development
•     Tools, sample templates, source code, and up-to-date information at SoftwarePipelines.org

About the Author
Cory Isaacson is CEO of Prelude Innovations, Inc., a fi rm specializing in the incubation and introduction of leading software technology products. Actively involved in leading information technologies for over 20 years, Cory served as technical editor and columnist for WebSphere Advisor Magazine, has spoken at hundreds of public events and seminars, and authored numerous articles on architecture and practicalities of employing technology. Cory has provided guidance to hundreds of top architects and professional developers in the fi nancial services, entertainment, telco, and software industries on the development and implementation of powerful business applications.

Most recently Cory was president of Rogue Wave Software, managing the organization for over three years, building new product strategies, and culminating in a successful acquisition in mid-2007 by a leading private equity fi rm. Cory has focused on effi ciently addressing development and deployment challenges of emerging technologies such as SOA, virtualization, and commoditization of resources to support real-world business applications. Cory’s expertise with highperformance transactional applications has helped leading IT organizations respond to the challenges of dramatic growth in business and data volumes, while still managing cost pressures. Most recently, Cory has been an active evangelist on the need for using concurrent processing and scalable database techniques in order to improve application performance on multi-core architectures.

Cory received his B.A. degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (January 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0137137974
• ISBN-13: 978-0137137978
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #358,651 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Essential Read, January 5, 2009

By	Karol A. Blanchard (Washington DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an essential read for any company and software team serious about developing software that will survive scalability and longevity. The book is well written; it is clear and concise with an easy to understand style and elucidating examples. And, Cory provides everything in one package - the need, the theory, the methodology, examples, and even code - that one needs to understand and apply his theory of Software Pipelines. He also provides a compelling case to present to management to gain support for including Software Pipelines in your software lifecycle approach.

Software Pipelines is about including transaction throughput analysis in the software development process and creating a pipeline and pipeline distributor architecture to dynamically control transaction routing and execution over a network to avoid bottlenecks and to take full advantage of controlled parallel processing. We control where and when transactions are routed and executed and can make modifications to the pipeline architecture at any time, or program the pipelines to dynamically delegate to other pipelines, to offset bottlenecks and increased activity thereby taking full advantage of our computing resources. Couple this with database sharding and it is easy to see how we can create a massively robust, scalable, and flexible architecture. It makes incredible sense...

Karol Blanchard
VP Engineering
Consumer Health Advisers

5.0 out of 5 stars Who should read this book? You should., June 19, 2009

By	Thomas Ciancio - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It seems that you can hardly open a browser (or the news paper for that matter) without being inundated with ads for the latest computer that features some new dual or quad core processor. Being a self proclaimed geek I always have to go search for the latest white paper to answer that ever burning question; do I need one?

What I have found is that you CAN have too much computer. I know, I never thought I would say it either. It is just that so many applications are poorly designed and poorly developed that simply adding a multi core processer or even an additional computer may not give you the benefit you are looking for. What you need is a well designed well thought out architecture that takes advantage of the investment you have made when you purchased all that computing power.

How do you get there from here? Read the book....

Which of course begs the question WHO should buy the book?
After all only a few books are written for architects and developers as well as development managers. Cory has gone three better with his approach to writing by speaking to quality assurance specialists, project managers and operations managers. It helps to have some development background for a few chapters but Mr. Isaacson even makes this easy by spelling out what chapters each role will likely benefit from.

Who should read this book? You should.

5.0 out of 5 stars Must read for Software Architects, March 9, 2009

By	PJ Murray (Europe) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Excellent book - a must read for any software architects interested in deploying SOA applications on multi-core processors.