SOA Patterns

Preface

In 1996, I led development in a small startup. I had worked on multiuser systems before, but this was the first big distributed system I wrote. I found out the hard way that it isn’t a simple task—a lot can and does go wrong, and simplified assumptions you make at the onset will come back to haunt you.

I learned my lesson, and I’ve been developing distributed systems ever since. Over the years, I discovered service-oriented architecture (SOA), and I found that, with its emphasis on interfaces and flexibility, it’s a really good way to build distributed systems and it brings a lot of benefits. As I spent a few years working on many projects, I saw that a lot of people misuse SOA, that a lot don’t understand it, and that good advice is ...