Vendor agnostic SOA training

[Rob Moores]

Hi all. We (Leeds Met) are hoping to run some vendor-agnostic SOA
training courses during 2010. It would be very useful if you can let
me know of any competitors in this area that you are aware of, and if
you think most businesses in the region (or even UK-wide) are at a
stage where SOA is becoming important enough to get skilled up on. Any
other tips, advice or comments equally welcome !

[Neil Warnock]

Hi Rob,

Most of UK Plc and UK Govt uses SOA in one shape or another, even if
it's only to call out to the odd basic SOAP webservice. At the other end
of the scale, full blown ESB, workflow engines, orchestration (WSFL,
BPEL, JBPM et al) are increasing in popularity and already feature as
the backbone of some top end enterprise systems, and 're-architected'
legacy integrations.

Most IT training organisations will do some form of SOA training, from
simple web service publishing via Visual Studio or Eclipse for example,
through to specialised AppServer and workflow engine performance tuning.
There is a lot of competition but it's generally orientated around a
specific proprietary technology product.

I think that unless you are proposing a basic intro to SOA concepts ---
eg design patterns, principles and best practices --- it will be
difficult to keep it vendor-agnostic. For example, in terms of service
bus technology, at one end you have Mulesoft (open source) and at the
other you have Biztalk. Conceptually (arguably) similar but practically
very different beasts.

If you want to keep things vendor-agnostic you might want to validate
whatever you're offering with regard to OASIS (an open stds org)
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_cat.php?cat=soa That way you can
be sure you are teaching transferrable skills around an open standard.
SCA (service component architecture) is emerging as a standard for
building SOA components and so might be a good vendor-agnostic training
module but as soon as you get into the exercises what languages and
products are you going to use?!

A bit of a minefield once you get beyond the principles. Might be easier
to pick specific products that have an open source community edition and
base your training around that. Spring, JBOSS & Mule don't upset too
many non-Microsoft religions (but I've still had to break up the odd
fight at the Luminary offices)

Rgds,

Neil Warnock
Luminary - An Ingres Company
Tel: +44 (0) 845 371 4090
Mob: +44 (0) 7712 650291
Email: Neil.W...@luminary.co.uk

For more information on Luminary go to http://www.luminary.co.uk
Luminary Solutions Limited Registered in England No 4854134 VAT Reg No.
829 3166 13
Registered Office: Lacon House, Theobald's Road, London, WC1X 8RW

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[Rob Davies]

I would add Apache based open source projects - Apache ServiceMix and
Apache Camel into the mix. They work really well together - and have
been deployed in global organizations - like Sabre Holdings, CVS and
many, many more.

thanks,

Rob Davies

Rob Davies
http://twitter.com/rajdavies
I work here: http://fusesource.com
My Blog: http://rajdavies.blogspot.com/
I'm writing this: http://www.manning.com/snyder/