Thomas Erl

This excerpt describes fundamental terms and concepts associated with service-oriented computing, including those related to service-oriented architecture, service-orientation, and cloud computing. Service-Oriented Computing Service-oriented computing is an umbrella term that represents a new generation distributed computing platform. As such, it encompasses many things, including its own design paradigm and design principles, design pattern catalogs, pattern languages, a distinct architectural model, and related concepts, technologies, and frameworks. Service-orientation (explained shortly) emerged as a formal method in support of achieving the following goals and benefits associated with service-oriented computing: Increased Intrinsic Interoperability - Services within a given boundary are designed to be naturally compatible so that they can be effectively assemble... (more)

Cloud Computing, SOA and Windows Azure - Part 3

For a complete list of the co-authors and contributors, see the end of the article. A cloud service in Windows Azure will typically have multiple concurrent instances. Each instance may be running all or a part of the service's codebase. As a developer, you control the number and type of roles that you want running your service. Web Roles and Worker Roles Windows Azure roles are comparable to standard Visual Studio projects, where each instance represents a separate project. These roles represent different types of applications that are natively supported by Windows Azure. There ... (more)

A Look Ahead to the Service-Oriented World

BEA recently announced that it is broadening its SOA consulting practice, and that it has created a tool companies can use to learn about SOA and figure out how prepared they are to transition to the new architectural model. While BEA and other major vendors, such as IBM and Microsoft, continue to deepen their investments in SOA, many of us are still struggling to understand what SOA actually is. How well do you know SOA? If you were asked to write a definition right now, what would it be? One of the challenges has always been to distinguish SOA from a standard distributed archit... (more)

Exclusive SOA Web Services Journal Briefing – Thomas Erl On SOA

With the unwavering prominence of service-oriented architecture (SOA) there is an increasing interest in understanding what exactly it means for something to be considered "service-oriented." Thomas Erl recently completed a lengthy research project for SOA Systems Inc. into the origins of SOA and the current state of service-orientation among all primary SOA technology platforms. This body of work contributed to the mainstream SOA methodology developed by SOA Systems and was also documented in Thomas's new book, Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design. We ... (more)

Introducing SOA Design Patterns

Originally inspired by techniques used to design buildings and cities, and popularized by the Gang of Four during the mainstream emergence of object-orientation, design patterns have seen us through the various shifts in architecture, technology, and, of course, design. Pattern catalogs have periodically emerged, one building on the other, and each revealing a set of problem-solving techniques and providing invaluable insights as to how and when those techniques should be used to help us attain our design goals. SOA has its own history, having risen out of a haze of ambiguity to e... (more)