SOA and ROA Design Principles and Patterns

I've been compiling a list of design patterns and anti-patterns on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Resource Oriented Architecture (ROA). I find the following resources quite useful.

If you're looking for design patterns in building RESTful applications, the best way to start is to look at the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) which is a good embodiment of the principles of the REST architectural style. The Google Data API (GData) is a real world implementation of AtomPub. At the XML 2007 Conference, I've proposed a RESTful approach to aviation technical data management called "Integrated Documentation Environment for Aircraft Support (IDEAS)" (more on that on my previous blog RESTful IDEAS).

Another good resource is the book "RESTful Web Services" by Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby. Chapter 8 entitled "REST and ROA Best Practices" is a must read and also addresses potential REST implementation issues such as asynchronous operations and transactions. Chapter 10 entitled "The Resource-Oriented Architecture Versus Big Web Services" offers ROA alternatives to WS-* specifications.

For SOA design patterns and anti-patterns, here are some useful resources:

• SOA Antipatterns: an article by a group of IBM SOA architects
  
• SOA anti-Patterns: an article by Steve Jones at InfoQ
  
• SOA Patterns: the first draft of Thomas Erl's upcoming book entitled "SOA Design Patterns"
  
• Pete Lacey Criticizes Web Services: an interesting discussion on REST vs. WS-*.
  

I don't believe that ROA is the answer to all SOA project failures out there. However, I do believe that certain requirements and use cases are more amenable to the REST architectural style (more on that in a future post).