Web Services and SOA for Managers

Target Audience: IT Managers
Pre-Requisites: None
Duration/Format:1 Day. This is a course involving both lectures and demos delivered by an expert instructor.

Course Description

This half-day course provides IT managers with a high level overview of Web Services and its key concepts so they can understand the benefits of adopting Web Services technology and identify areas within their enterprise where Web Services can have a positive and immediate impact. The course also provides Managers with opportunities to see live demos of Web Services in action.

Objectives
Upon the completion of this half-day course, the participants will be able to:

Describe Web Services and how they enable application integration.
Understand how the different standards and standards bodies work together to provide a set of standards.
Understand advanced issues such as Web Services security and transactions.
Understand the core concepts and design principles of service-oriented architecture, and how Web Services can be used as an underlying technology for SOA.
Identify areas where Web Services can have an immediate impact within their enterprise.

Detailed Course Content

Core Technologies for Web Services

A high level overview of XML, WSDL, SOAP and UDDI: this chapter demystifies the underlying core technologies behind Web Services
These technologies are presented in terms of the classic service provider, service interface and service consumer trilogy.

Web Services Demo

An expert instructor will show Web Services in action.
A Web Services client and server implementing a stock quote service will be demonstrated.
The instructor will show how XML, WSDL, and SOAP are used in the interactions
If network resources are available, the instructor will connect to an Internet Web Services on the web.
The demo will use Eclipse, Java, Mindreef SoapScope and Artix.

Web Services Standards and Organisations

The Web Services standards space is shared by a number of organisations; this section describes each body and their associated standards.
Organisations include OASIS, W3C, WS-I, OMG and Java Community

Web Services Security

Why security is so important for Web Services
Challenges (and solutions) for Web Services security are presented and discussed.
Use of secure transports (HTTPS) and WSSE headers.
Security related standards.

Web Services Transactions

Why transactions are so important for service re-use and aggregation.
Different transaction semantics: long-lived, short-lived, ACID, business process modelling, compensation.
Requirements for a Web Services transaction monitor.
Transactions-related standards.

Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture

What are services, and what benefits do they offer?
Service-oriented architecture
Why Web Services are ideally suited to the goals of service-oriented architecture.
SOA and the "Enterprise service bus".
SOA without Web Services

Principles of service-oriented design

The principles of good service-oriented design are discussed: loose-coupling, formal contracts, abstraction, re-use, composition, autonomy, stateless and discovery.
With these principles in mind, common IT assets are reviewed and assessed with regards to how "service-oriented" they really are.

Summary, References and Useful links