Migrating Legacy Systems to SOA Environments - eLearning

The reality is that service-oriented architecture (SOA) is currently the best option available for systems integration and the leveraging of legacy systems. According to a 2007 Gartner Group report, 50% of new mission-critical operational applications and business processes were designed in 2007 around SOA, and that number will be more than 80% by 2010. While the technologies to implement SOA will probably change over time, one concept will remain: SOA promises a way to design systems that enables cost-efficiency, agility, adaptability, and the leveraging of legacy investments.

However, before starting an SOA development effort, an organization needs to gain a realistic understanding of the potentials and pitfalls of SOA adoption. Migrating Legacy Systems to SOA Environments outlines the basic concepts of SOA, illustrates common misconceptions about SOA adoption, and introduces fundamentals for successfully implementing service-oriented systems. This course addresses service-oriented systems development and its challenges from the perspectives of the service developer, the application developer, and the infrastructure developer. The course also addresses potential issues in leveraging legacy systems in SOA environments. It outlines a method-the SEI SOA Migration, Adoption, and Reuse Technique(SMART)-that helps organizations to develop a realistic strategy for the migration of legacy systems to a specific SOA target environment.

Exercises are used throughout the course to provide a concrete context for the methods and strategies.

Learners will have six months to complete the course. Upon completing all course elements, the learner is awarded an electronic certificate of course completion and 1 Continuing Education Unit (CEU).

Who should attend?

• Technical managers, managers, and software engineers who are looking for a solid overview of what SOA adoption really involves
• Technical managers, managers, and software engineers who are considering the migration of legacy systems to service-oriented environments
• Individuals tasked with development and deployment of service-oriented systems or with migration of legacy systems to SOA environments
• Individuals who make decisions about SOA strategy and implementation

Topics

• The Basics of SOA
• The Four Pillars of Service-Oriented Systems Development
• Challenges of Migration to SOA Environments
• SMART (SOA Migration, Adoption, and Reuse Technique)

Migrating Legacy Systems to SOA Environments-eLearning will require a minimum of 10 hours of study time. Once registered, learners will be granted 24-hour-a-day access to the course material for six months.

This course is designed so that the learner can participate at any time that is convenient. Exercises follow the introduction of new ideas to reinforce and apply the concepts that have been taught. Learners can explore the exercises, the solutions presented by other learners, and the solution set recommended by the SEI. All parts of the course can be repeated as often as needed by the learner.

A panel of SEI instructors is available to respond to questions and to offer clarification of the subject matter.

Objectives

• basic concepts related to SOA and service-oriented systems
• challenges of implementing service-oriented systems, including the technical and organizational issues that need to be addressed
• implications of SOA characteristics for the migration of legacy systems to SOA environments
• the SMART method for determining the feasibility and effort required for the migration of legacy systems to SOA environments

Completion of this course fulfills a training requirement for the SEI's SOA Architect Professional certificate program.

Prerequisites

To access the course, your computer must have the following:

• Broadband (greater than 200kbps) internet connection (for video streaming)
• Operating Systems: Windows 98 / NT 4.0 / Windows 2000 / Windows XP / Windows Vista / Windows 7 / Mac OS X
• Browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or above / Mozilla Firefox
• Configure your browser to allow pop-ups from this site
• Explorer: Tools/Internet Options/Privacy
• Firefox: Tools/Options/Content

Materials

• Instruction presented by SEI instructors
• 260 slides
• 9 hours of video training sessions with transcripts
• 5 exercises with solutions
• 1 self-assessment with remediation
• Access to technical reports and other work aids for download
• Virtual forum for SEI instructor support

The course is presented in the form of video-recorded training sessions that were presented by SEI instructors to a classroom of students representing a variety of industries. Learn more about the instructors.

Five exercises included with the course explore and reinforce the concepts taught and their application. Multiple solutions are available for review, along with the analysis and recommended solutions from the SEI instructors. A self-assessment, with remediation guidance, insures the learner's thorough comprehension of the subject matter.

A panel of SEI Instructors is available for questions and will provide clarification and elaboration in a virtual forum available to all course participants.

All course and reference materials are included within the SEI Learning Portal and can be downloaded.