Building distributed yet integrated systems remains a difficult problem to solve. First, it requires a solid understanding of the individual components to be connected. Next, we have to connect these components in a way that balances loose coupling against system-wide requirements, such as latency and security. Last but not least, the resulting system has to be monitored and managed. Over time, a number of approaches have set out to solve these challenges: distributed components, EAI messaging, and, more recently, service-oriented architectures (SOA). While these approaches and tools have been a tremendous help, there is still no easy step-by-step recipe for balancing potentially opposing requirements into a coherent solution.

This is why design patterns are such a critical resource for building successful SOA solutions. Patterns encode knowledge and experience in a way that can be applied in a variety of contexts and technologies. They are not a one-size-fits-all silver bullet, but they do present forces and counterforces that steer us toward a reusable, wellbalanced solution. At the same time, they form an important vocabulary that allows us to communicate our design decisions succinctly and precisely.

Arnon has harvested design decisions from years of building SOA solutions and has encoded his knowledge and experience in this book. He presents a conceptual framework of an SOA, which serves as the roadmap through various aspects of SOA design. For each aspect, he shares actionable guidance and examples from real-world project experience. At the end, he pulls all the pieces together in a real-world case study.