Woods, D.; Mattern, T.: Enterprise SOA : Designing IT for Business Innovation. First Edition, Sebastopol: O’Reilly, 2006

Although not published through SAP Press and not visible otherwise from the front cover, one clearly has to state that this is a book which is discussing the SAP view on enterprise SOA / ESA. Dan Woods was already author of the first book about Enterprise Services Architecture published in 2003 (German version 2004: Enterprise Services Architecture). For this new book now he gets support from Thomas Mattern, which is the Solution Marketing Manager for ESA at SAP. This might be a little hint.

Short assessment: If you are already using SAP technology or if you are thinking about using it in the future, this book will give an overview and serve as a good entry point to get informed about new visions, concepts and products at SAP. If you just want to get informed about SOA and already know that you won’t implement your SOA using SAP technology, better keep on searching as large parts of the book are product focused.

Chapters of the book:

1. ESA in the World of Information Technology
2. The Business Case for ESA
3. Evolving Toward ESA
4. ESA Fundamentals: Learning to Think ESA
5. The Structure of ESA
6. The Enterprise Services Community
7. Creating a Roadmap with the ESA Adoption Program
8. The Enterprise Services Repository and the Enterprise Services Inventory
9. Project Mendocino: A Product Based on Consuming Enterprise Services
10. ESA at Work: Examples from the Field
11. SAP xApps Composite Applications for Analytics
12. The Architecture and Development Tools of Composite Applications
13. Supporting Composite Applications
14. Web Services Basics
15. Creating Enterprise Services in ABAP
16. Creating and Consuming Services in Java
17. ESA and IT Governance
18. ESA Life Cycle Management and Operations
19. ESA Security
20. Standards and ESA

Do expect:

• answers to questions you might have
• practical guidance supported by screenshots and images
• a business-oriented introduction why enterprise SOA is important
• to get an overview of SAP visions, applications, tools, consulting services and community initiatives in the context of SOA

Don’t expect:

• good structuring
• precise definitions of terms, concepts and technologies
• academical examination of SOA
• vendor-neutrality

Categories: SAP enterprise SOA