BEA has self-published a set of SOA guides targeted at providing practitioners with a BEA oriented reference architecture. This is an interesting time for this effort, as the SOA Reference Model from OASIS has just recieved enough votes to become standardized.
BEA has always taken an approach of "innovate then standardize", which leads them to maintain control of emerging specifications until they are more fully baked. This is typical of the SOA and Web Services efforts from companies such as Microsoft which recently released a number of WS specifications into royalty free use. Contributors include participants from MetLife and Wells Fargo and several other end user organizations, as well as reviewers such as Steve Jones from CapGemini.
The guides (PDF):
BEA has always taken an approach of "innovate then standardize", which leads them to maintain control of emerging specifications until they are more fully baked. This is typical of the SOA and Web Services efforts from companies such as Microsoft which recently released a number of WS specifications into royalty free use. Contributors include participants from MetLife and Wells Fargo and several other end user organizations, as well as reviewers such as Steve Jones from CapGemini.
The guides (PDF):
- Part 1, Why Services-Oriented Architecture? It provides a high-level summary of SOA.
- Part 2: SOA Reference Architecture provides a worked design of an enterprise-wide SOA implementation, with detailed architecture diagrams, component descriptions, detailed requirements, design patterns, opinions about standards, patterns on regulation compliance, standards templates, and potential code assets from members.
- Part 3: Introduction to Services Lifecycle provides a detailed process for services management though the service lifecycle, from inception through to retirement or repurposing of the services. It also contains an appendix that includes organization and governance best practices, templates, comments on key SOA standards, and recommended links for more information.