Issue XVII, April 2008 Relating Master Data Management to SOA by Chris Madrid Distributed application development has proliferated business data throughout the enterprise, resulting in a web of dependent and redundant data silos that adversely affect enterprise agility. Many assumed that by merely adopting SOA these complexities would be magically abstracted and a method for seamlessly aggregating this data for consumption would manifest itself. However, it turns out that for most larger IT enterprises challenges, such as variations in data quality, differing primary keys, and multiple systems of record, have created a situation where real-time aggregation of data is impractical. Master Data Management (MDM) has emerged as a potential solution for removing this barrier... [view] SOA in Healthcare (Part I) by Girish Juneja, Blake Dournaee, Joe Natoli and Steve Birkel Healthcare organizations today are challenged to manage growing portfolios of systems and applications. The cost of acquiring, integrating, and maintaining these systems is rising, while end-user demands are increasing. Furthermore, evolving clinical requirements need to be continually accommodated along with the required support for revenue cycle and administration business functions. In addition to all these factors, there are increased demands for enabling interoperability between other healthcare organizations to regionally support care delivery. SOA offers system design and management principles in support of the reuse and sharing of system resources across that are potentially very valuable to a typical healthcare organization. This two part article explores how healthcare organizations can leverage shared services to automate multiple business processes and strengthen overall interoperability while reducing the need to synchronize data between isolated systems. Services may be made available, no matter their location, to create solutions that reach beyond the desktop, the department, and the healthcare organization as a whole... [view] A Program Management Methodology for SOA by James P. Lawler Program management is a key part of any successful IT project. With SOA, the management of a "program of related projects" is often required when carrying out larger adoption initiatives. But even when your SOA project revolves around just a single solution, the management of the delivery of that solution should be part of a formal program. This article describes a disciplined program management methodology for organizations attempting SOA projects and is further supplemented by the results of a two-year long research effort during which 15 projects across different organizations were studied and assessed... [view]	When first designing a service-oriented architecture, there is often much talk about the benefit of abstraction that results from applying service-orientation to a given environment. Certainly, there is benefit to be had. The collection of services that are delivered as part of an SOA project establish an architectural layer that ends up abstracting the various parts of the pre-existing enterprise landscape, which, more often than not, is littered with legacy technology. Abstracting some or all of this away from new potential consumer programs that want to access proprietary resources without being permanently coupled to their proprietary characteristics, can certainly make a positive difference. But, as with anything, there is an extent of benefit that can be attained, and it is directly related to the quality of the abstraction layer itself. You can design a poor service layer that will still abstract everything that lies beneath it, but will provide consumer programs with inadequate (and perhaps also proprietary) interfaces. This is why contract design is so important and so emphasized with service-orientation. Standardized contracts lead to a federated service layer that fosters interoperability and true loose coupling with consumers. It is this target state that we have to keep in our sights when working toward an SOA, because merely abstracting one thing with another will get you little more than an extra layer of processing. - Thomas Erl, Series Editor and Site Editor SOA Certification Workshop (May 5-11, 2008) This seven-day workshop contains the credit courses required for the SOA Consultant and SOA Architect Certifications. For more details, visit www.soaworkshop.com. The following are upcoming releases in the "Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl": •   Web Service Contract Design       & Versioning for SOA (61 days) •  SOA Design Patterns (October 2008) •  SOA with .NET (Q4/2008) •  SOA with Java (Q4/2008) •  ESB Architecture for SOA (Q1/2009) •  SOA Governance (Q2/2009) To learn more visit www.soabooks.com. To be automatically notified of new issues, provide your E-mail Address:   To send feedback and contribution suggestions, use the online submission form.

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