Preface

In 1996, I led development in a small startup. I had worked on multiuser systems before, but this was the first big distributed system I wrote. I found out the hard way that it isn’t a simple task—a lot can and does go wrong, and simplified assumptions you make at the onset will come back to haunt you.

I learned my lesson, and I’ve been developing distributed systems ever since. Over the years, I discovered service-oriented architecture (SOA), and I found that, with its emphasis on interfaces and flexibility, it’s a really good way to build distributed systems and it brings a lot of benefits. As I spent a few years working on many projects, I saw that a lot of people misuse SOA, that a lot don’t understand it, and that good advice is hard to find. I decided to write a book—the year was 2006.

It is now 2012 and the book is finally finished. Any author will tell you that writing a book is hard, and it takes more time than initially thought. This is all true, but that’s not my excuse. I finished the first third of the book reasonably on schedule, but then I joined another startup, which consumed every shred of free time I had for almost four years. On the upside, I gained more experience and I went over what I had written and updated the technology mapping sections, so you’re essentially getting a second edition now. Also, the startup that prevented me from completing this book stars as the case study for chapter 9, so it did contribute something to the book as well.