http://www.soamag.com The SOA Magazine is a monthly online publication provided by SOA Systems Inc. and Prentice Hall/PearsonPTR and is officially associated with the "Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl." SOA en-us Copyright 2008, SOA Systems Inc. http://www.soamag.com From the Editor: I'm happy to announce that the First International SOA Symposium will officially be open for registration later this month. The conference will take place in Amsterdam and organizers have actually booked an entire soccer stadium (!) for the event. Many of the top SOA authors and experts from around the world will be delivering a broad range of sessions. With the cooperation of Prentice Hall, we'll also be coordinating book launches and giveaway contests. Overall, there'll be 40 sessions across 10 tracks plus various panels and workshops. The sessions themselves are being carefully reviewed by a nine-person committee. Hopefully some of you join us at what is being billed as the "largest SOA event of the year." SOA http://www.soamag.com/I19/0608-1.asp The United States Department of Defense (DoD) understands the value of information. While this understanding is very clear, it does not yet have a fully functional or satisfactory prescription for the strategic and technical ailments that pains its communities. Service-oriented architectures are not magic but the concepts, if applied with logic, leadership and continuity, make sense. Any mission or objective must be clearly defined with planning and the use of blueprints to build solutions that have meaning to those who will be served. There is disparity in data across domains within the DoD, but there are emerging ideas and technical strategies in development to address this issue. And SOA is a key part of this solution. SOA http://www.soamag.com/I19/0608-2.asp To build a successful SOA, architects need to pour the foundation first - they need to begin with a data abstraction layer that makes sense of an otherwise chaotic data landscape. Data abstraction leads to the ability to leverage physical data, no matter how it's structured, as new, logical schemas that exist only in middleware - creating a common data layer that architects can restructure as needed, rather than making costly changes to the physical database or core services. This article examines the use of a common data layer leveraged through data abstraction, its key advantages, and the value and ROI it generates for enterprises that deploy a SOA. SOA http://www.soamag.com/I19/0608-3.asp This article, the second in a two-part series, examines why strategic SOA investments so often suffer from poor technical implementation and diminished ROI. In the first article, we established common SOA engineering misconceptions that are often the root cause of poor SOA technical implementations. Within this second part, we will examine key SOA engineering focal points and success factors that are essential to successful SOA solution implementations. The goal here is to empower IT leadership, management, and enterprise architects with the knowledge necessary to apply high-level guidance to SOA engineering teams and to position the SOA investment for successful technical implementation and maximum ROI. SOA