Getting ready to move to EDA/SOA any words of wisdom?

Question

We are currently getting ready to move to an Event Driven/Service Oriented architecture (know it will be a long process). Just wanted to get some words of wisdom if anyone has any advice. Our mgmt is starting to really push the transition, but coming from a sequential processing environment we are worried not just about our IT gorup, but how the business will react to it.

Just wanted to see what other initial hurdles others have had to endure with this type of move. They purchased Oracle's WebLogic / SOA / BPEL Suite.

Thanks,

S

Answer 1

Make sure you have someone on the team (staff or contractor) who REALLY knows EDA/SOA well.

Too many companies figure they should try a new technology because of the buzz surrounding it and a few good articles in CIO magazine, but fail to bring knowledge into the company necessary to succeed.

Answer 2

What Eric J. said.

Also, try to fight the urge to have some centralized piece of code that acts as the master control for everything.

It's also a good idea to try to have your services organized vertically (based on separate business responsibilities, each with a full vertical stack) vs horizontally (where each service calls 'down' into a lower layer). they should act more like peers than layers.

Answer 3

Read about how to discover your services and a little about soa methodology, governance... If you dont do that you can get a SOA spaghetty system.

http://www.amazon.com/Service-Oriented-Architecture-SOA-Concepts-Technology/dp/0131858580