Preface

Service-Oriented Architecture is not just changing how we approach application integration, but the mindset of software development.

Applications as we know them are becoming a thing of the past, in the future we will increasingly think of services and how those services are assembled to build complete, "composite" applications that can be modified quickly and easily to adapt to a continually evolving business environment.

This is the vision of a standards-based Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), where the IT infrastructure is continuously adapted to keep up with the pace of business change.

Oracle is at the forefront of this vision, with the Oracle SOA Suite providing the most comprehensive, proven, and integrated tool kit for building SOA based applications.

This is no idle boast. Oracle Fusion Applications (the re-implementation of Oracle's E-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards Enterprise as a single application) is probably the largest composite application being built today and it has the Oracle SOA platform at its core.

Developers and Architects using the Oracle SOA Suite, whether working on integration projects, building new bespoke applications or specializing in large implementations of Oracle Applications will need a book that provides a "hands on" guide on how best to harness and apply this technology, this book will enable them to do just that.