The “Service Oriented Architecture for Dummies book” we (Me, Judith Hurwitz, Carol Baroudi & Marcia Kaufman) have been writing is now written and on its way to the printers. I’m awestruck to discover, from Carol Baroudi, that if you Google the book’s title you get over 30,000 hits. Why?

Well for one reason; the book has already been published in abbreviated form (sponsored by IBM) and received some unsolicited publicity from Steve Hamm of Business Week Online. Some blog sites seem to be promising free copies of this short version, and pointing to IBM’s web site—although I doubt if IBM has sanctioned such ad hoc distribution. (After all, IBM paid for its copies).

The brief positive review by Steve Hamm provoked a negative tirade from Phil Gilbert, which I ran into, in my Googling.

Who’s Phil Gilbert?

Someone who doesn’t like the book, but does like Bob Dylan as he quotes Dylan on his Blog page.

Why does he not like the book?

It’s philosophical. He offers the viewpoint that no-one should write a Dummies book on SOA. You see, he’s not actually read the IBM minibook. Indeed Monsieur Gilbert, proclaims:

“This book is written by an IBM’er who is, no doubt, touting the company line that the road to the business runs straight through the ESB.”

I wasn’t immediately inclined to rain on his tirade, but disparaging a book you’ve never even seen is too much for me. Think red rag. Think Bull.

So I post him some feedback.

You state that “This book is written by an IBM’er who is, no doubt, touting the company line that the road to the business runs straight through the ESB.”

Awesome! Where do you get your unreliable information from? As one of the authors of the “SOA for Dummies” book (the others are Judith Hurwitz, Carol Baroudi and Marcia Kaufman) I can confirm that none of us has ever worked for IBM.

The book doesn’t advocate ESBs particularly either, but hell, why bother to gather any information about the book or even read it before you condemn it?

You seem remarkably snobbish about the production of a book that is aimed at explaining something that is actually quite difficult to understand. Do you have the same objection to, for example, “C++ for Dummies”? Is that also guilty of ‘the sin’ of spreading a technology-led message to less technical people, in an effort to help them ‘get it’?

Perhaps you should organize a “book burning” event or declare a fatwa. (We’d prefer the book burning event ourselves, because of the royalties).

Yours sincerely

Robin Bloor

That was destined to get some attention.

Monsieur Gilbert responds first by apologizing for getting the authors’ employer details wrong and then continues to discuss the book he hasn’t read. He writes; “For example, a book called ‘architecture for dummies’ would gain my scorn whereas a book called ‘bricklaying for dummies’ wouldn’t.”

So, Debra K. Dietch, former editor-in-chief of Architecture Magazine and former executive editor of Architecture Record, what on earth do you think you’re doing writing a book like Architecture For Dummies. You’ll only invite scorn!

Monsieur Gilbert continues; “The issue is whether SOA is about architecture, abstraction and alignment vs. implementation. It’s the difference between architecture and construction.”

Actually I think SOA’s about software architecture personally, loosely coupled software architecture at that. Architecture is (whether you’re in the building trade or the software trade) also about building—doing the implementation. Monsieur Gilbert thinks that SOA is something abstract. I disagree somewhat profoundly. I don’t think anything architectural is abstract. Mostly it’s engineering. The architecture of buildings involves aesthetics, but the architecture of software missed out on that.

Perhaps Phil and I should debate this issue in the fashion of “dueling blogs”—or maybe we should just go to lunch together. After all Monsieur Gilbert, it turns out, is the CTO of Lombardi Software, a BPM company located in Austin. I wonder if he knows I’m an IT analyst? Probably not.

We’re done here—for the moment.