Xebia Blog

The Top 10 SOA Pitfalls countdown hit #1 last week with Rik de Groot's post on "Ignoring culture when introducing SOA", time for a wrap-up.

Putting all pitfalls together in one simple 10 item list quickly reveals a grouping of types pitfalls. Number #1 and #2 are both related to organizational aspect. If the culture, mindset and attitude are not right, these are typically the pitfalls that a SOA endeavor may run in to. The next group covers the items #3 till #7, these are all related to architectural/design skills. And the last group, numbers #8 till #10, relates to implementation issues (although proper design could help to prevent these pitfalls from manifesting themselves).

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Filed under: Architecture, SOA
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Last week Viktor Grgic explained Unclear ownership / Project based funding. This week we’ll continue with #1 - Ignoring culture when introducing SOA.

SOA is an approach. The culture aspect of introducing a SOA is important, but it seems that companies want to invest in tools and not in people. In order of making this SOA to work they force their employees into this new way of thinking/acting. Often this leads to resistance which undermines the SOA goals. In this part we will look into ignoring culture when introducing SOA.
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Filed under: Architecture, General, SOA
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Last week Viktor Grgic explained the Missing skills en this week we’ll continue with #2 - Unclear ownership / Project based funding

In the world of standalone applications, there is typically a clear sponsorship and ownership of an application. There is also a single project with one project manager. The systems could be small or big, but the pattern remains the same. Funding is based on a business case and can be easily defended.
In SOA world, the story is different. There are the usual projects, each having their own objectives and often reluctant to work on generic services or enterprise components. If the ownership and funding for these components and aspects are unclear then chances are high that nothing happens on enterprise level or that it's not according to enterprise architecture or nobody feels responsible when things on enterprise level go wrong (e.g. security).
Several projects working together is not a bad situation, but there should also be a SOA steering committee and SOA competence center well funded and supported by company board.
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Filed under: Project Management, SOA
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Last week Gero Vermaas explained the Incorrectly Applied CDM en this week we’ll continue with #3 - Missing skills

Just like any other paradigm, a level of new knowledge and experience is required. Unfortunately, SOA requires lots of new knowledge and experience. It requires a different way of thinking of more or less everyone involved. People are used to closed environments on both organisational and technical level; largely well protected from influences and unwanted dependencies with the outside world. It's all in their area of influence which makes achieving short term results relatively easy. I'm referring to silo applications where the world is complicated enough. From their view, SOA makes things even more complex. There should be awareness that there is lack of knowledge, experience and attitude and something should be done about this first. There is no real solution, except for the obvious one: educate everyone involved. Also, agile methodologies have proven to be effective in building up knowledge and experience.
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Filed under: Agile, Architecture, SOA
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Last week Vincent explained the BDUF Pitfall en this week we’ll continue with #4: Incorrectly applied Canonical Data Model (CDM).

CDM is one of the silver bullets often fired in SOA projects. It should address miscommunication, ease integration and reduce integration costs. It surely can facilitate all of this, but attempts to use a CDM can also turn your SOA project into an endless discussion because one attempts to cover too much, because of a lack of alignment with business and because of a lack of design principles.
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Filed under: Architecture, Java, Performance, SOA
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Last week we discussed #6 - which means we've now passed the halfway point of SOA Pitfall countdown! Let's quickly move on to #5.

Like the Not Invented Here syndrome we discussed earlier, Big Design Up Front (BDUF) is something not only witnessed within the realm of SOA. However, where the NIH syndrome is generally accepted to be a bad thing, things are not that simple when it comes to BDUF.

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Filed under: Agile, Architecture, SOA
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After discussing #7: Incorrect granularity of services , let's move on to #6.

In organizations data and functionality/processes are often fragmented, but are needed centrally. What are the causes of this fragmentation. Does a SOA solve this complexity automatically? Most companies start with a SOA and are confronted with this complexity during the implementation of the SOA.
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Filed under: Architecture, SOA
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After discussing #8: Security, let's move on to #7.

Incorrect granularity could mean that a service covers too much functionality or too little functionality. Incorrect granularity of services in your SOA can lead to bad performance, low reuse possibilities, leaky abstractions and services without added business value. . Common causes for this are bottom-up and/or top-down design and taking a too narrow perspective (project instead of company scope). In this blog we’ll first take a closer look at the previously mentioned symptoms and their causes. And then we’ll explain why the solution lies in taking a business perspective when designing services.
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Filed under: Architecture, SOA
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Today was the last day of the JavaOne Conference. We came to the point when a lot of OutOfMemoryErrors where thrown. We just managed to squeeze in the last sessions.

Today's keynote was all about toys. The guys from the Netbeans team showed some new features such as a JavaScript editor (which contains code completion), Sentilla showed there small sensor thingies, which you can program to gather information, such as acceleration, temperature etc.., LiveScribe showed there very cool pen and lots more.

Today's topic included:

• User Experience
• SOA
• Semantic Web

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Filed under: Java, JavaOne, SOA, Usability
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Today was the third day of the conference. Another couple of hours to go and then it is all over again. The fatigue is kicking in, and we're starting to run on reserve power. The topics of today included:

• Mylyn
• Groovy
• Semantic Web
• SOA
• OSGi

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Filed under: Groovy, Java, JavaOne, SOA
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