| Organizing and explaining all of the wisdom about Enterprise Services Architecture clearly and directly was a major challenge that required several innovations. To help this book to serve the needs of a broad audience from business analysts to enterprise architects, we have employed a question-and-answer format for the chapters to help readers find the portions of the book that are right for them. To partition ESA into more digestible portions, we have boiled everything down into six concepts, each with its own section in the book: Part One, The Context for ESA, covers new ways of thinking about IT and explains how you must plan for ESA. Part Two, Conceiving a Vision for ESA, delves deeper into the technical aspects of ESA. Part Three, Consuming Services, explains simple ways to use services to create value. Part Four, Composing Services, covers the way that composite applications are constructed from services. Part Five, Creating Services, explains how services are created and managed. Part Six, Controlling Services, discusses new forms of governance based on services, as well as life cycle management, operations, security, and standards.
Inside each section are the following chapters:
Part One, The Context for ESA Chapter 1, ESA in the World of Information Technology, provides an explanation of the forces that led to the creation of ESA and how it fits into the world of enterprise computing. Chapter 2, The Business Case for ESA, is a summary of the business value of ESA. Chapter 3, Evolving Toward ESA, explains the complexities of managing the technology and organizational changes that are part of ESA.
Part Two, Conceiving a Vision for ESA Chapter 4, ESA Fundamentals: Learning to Think ESA, is a survey of ESA-related concepts. Chapter 5, The Structure of ESA, takes you on a top-to-bottom tour through the technology architecture of ESA. Chapter 6, The Enterprise Services Community, explains how SAP is creating a customer and partner ecosystem. Chapter 7, Creating a Roadmap with the ESA Adoption Program, provides a survey of the process created to help manage ESA adoption.
Part Three, Consuming Services Chapter 8, The Enterprise Services Repository and the Enterprise Services Inventory, explains the repository and inventory of enterprise services. Chapter 9, Project Mendocino: A Product Based on Consuming Enterprise Services, explains the joint SAP/Microsoft effort to use Microsoft Office to access SAP enterprise applications. Chapter 10, ESA at Work: Examples from the Field, comprises a survey of examples of how ESA has been used in various industries and processes.
Part Four, Composing Services Chapter 11, SAP xApps Composite Applications for Analytics, analyzes how analytic functionality works and why it is so important to enhancing the value of composite applications. Chapter 12, The Architecture and Development Tools of Composite Applications, provides a survey of the architecture and development tools used for creating composite applications. Chapter 13, Supporting Composite Applications, explains all of the support that SAP NetWeaver provides to enhance the functionality of composite applications.
Part Five, Creating Services Chapter 14, Web Services Basics, explains the fundamental web services concepts and architecture. Chapter 15, Creating Enterprise Services in ABAP, explains how to create enterprise services in ABAP. Chapter 16, Creating and Consuming Services in Java, explains how to create enterprise services in Java.
Part Six, Controlling Services Chapter 17, ESA and IT Governance, analyzes how ESA will affect IT governance. Chapter 18, ESA Life Cycle Management and Operations, analyzes how ESA will affect life cycle management and operations and how SAP will provide support. Chapter 19, ESA Security, analyzes ESA security issues and discusses how SAP will provide support. Chapter 20, Standards and ESA, explains the vital role that standards play in ESA.
Despite all of our sincere efforts, the best that this book can be is a snapshot of where ESA is in 2006 and where it is going. We hope this snapshot explains the context for IT that we are trying to create so that you and your organization can best use ESA to transform your business and succeed in every way you can. |
