Application Development for IBM WebSphere Process Server 7 and Enterprise Service Bus 7

I mentioned previously that I'm reviewing a second book from Packt Publishing, entitled Application Development for IBM WebSphere Process Server 7 and Enterprise Service Bus 7.

Well, I'm mid-way through the book, which has proved to be an excellent read thus far. Having reached Chapter 7, we're now starting to look at a hypothetical existing customer, JungleSea, and identify their business and IT problems/requirements with their existing sales order processing system, which ( as with many organisations ) is built in a "stove-pipe" fashion, with specific applications for each and every business function, many developed before the vision of Service Oriented Architecture was born.

Up until this point, we've really only scratched the surface of the capabilities of WebSphere Process Server (WPS) and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (WESB) with a focus on topics such as web services, Business Objects, mediation, service endpoints etc.

I'm enjoying the book immensely, especially given the fact that WPS/WESB are solutions with which I've not worked in "anger", but have seen in a number of my portal engagements over the past year or so.

I do have a few gripes, more with the presentation than with the content: -

• The English, whilst excellent, is somewhat overlong - I know that I'm often guilty of using 5 words when 1 word would do, but this book does suffer the same "problem". It's not a major problem, but it does nag at me from time to time
• There is some inconsistency in acronym expansion - early on, the authors use the terms WS-BPEL and BPEL interchangeably, and then indicate that they're going to use BPEL from that point on, and then switch back to WS-BPEL and so on. It may be as a result of having multiple authors, but again it's a niggle
• On occasion, the book provides instruction to do specific tasks in WebSphere Integration Developer (WID), but often skims over the detail - therefore, this book definitely wouldn't serve as one's only introduction to WID, WPS and WESB. However, this book would work extremely well, if read shortly after a developer had received formal training on the products
• The book is well stocked with pictures, both mindmaps and screenshots, but, and this is partly down to it's size/format, the pictures are often very, very small, making it hard to draw any detail from them - if I had my way, I'd have preferred the book to be printed in an A4 format, similar to the IBM Redbooks but .....

So, I'm continuing to enjoy the read, and will report back once I've completed it.

It may be worth noting that I'm undertaking this read / review as a favour to Packt - they did provide me with a copy of the book, but that's all - my review is MY review, based upon my own observations, opinions and findings.

Whilst on the subject of Packt, it's worth noting that they also have an online digital book service called *   PacktLib, which provides registered users with access to NINE books free-of-charge. Take a look ....