WebSphere

SOA considerations

There are certain key considerations when building a service-oriented architecture (SOA) solution. This section explains some of the key goals of an SOA solution, and how they apply to an enterprise service bus (ESB).

Introduction

SOA is an architecture for building business applications from loosely coupled components, and for delivering a well-defined level of service. Decoupling service requesters (consumers) from service providers greatly increases flexibility. It allows the substitution of one service provider for another, without the requester being aware of the change and without the need to alter the architecture.

You can use an SOA to connect across different systems without undue complexity, generally using an ESB. You can use an ESB to reuse assets in a flexible way, by passing service interactions through logic called mediations. Mediations operate on messages in transit between requesters and providers; they allow facilities such as message filtering, protocol conversion, database logging, and dynamic routing.

WebSphere details

All SOA solutions have a similar life cycle, which for WebSphere® ESB and WebSphere Process Server can be summarized as follows:
  1. Model.
    • Capture your business design. This includes relating your business processes to the services they will need.
  2. Assemble.
    • Integrate your existing applications, databases, and services. Use WebSphere Integration Developer to create a mediation module that integrates your existing assets, and defines qualities of service.
  3. Deploy.
    • You might need to create the runtime environment before deploying your mediation module to the run time. Creating the runtime environment includes resolving resource dependencies and integrity constraints.
  4. Manage.
    • Use the runtime administrative console to carry out routine maintenance such as administering and securing applications, resources, and users. This phase also includes monitoring the availability of applications and systems, and monitoring the performance of service requests and responses. The run time provides facilities for monitoring and tuning, but you might also use monitoring products such as IBM® Tivoli® Composite Application Management for SOA.

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Timestamp icon Last updated: 20 June 2010 00:38:45 BST (DRAFT)


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