IBM releases SOA catalog with Web service resources

IBM chose Paris as the venue on Tuesday to announce the SOA Business Catalog, a compendium of reusable templates, code, and best-practice business models for 15 different industries.

Free IT resource TechNet: More ways to know it, share it, and keep it running. Sponsored by Microsoft Free IT resource Attend the SOA Executive Forum: Breaking SOA Bottlenecks SOAExecForum.com/may2007 Sponsored by InfoWorld

The catalog, to be released at first with 500 to 600 reusable resources, will accelerate SOA creation and solve specific business problems, said Sandy Carter, vice president of SOA and WebSphere Strategy and Marketing.

Carter said the catalog makes the business proposition of SOA services a reality.

"The major benefits are around reuse and flexibility of services that are interchangeable and loosely coupled," Carter said.

The catalog includes things, such as adapters, that will allow IT to connect its existing environment to Web services. One IBM customer used the adapter to wrap a Web service around legacy RPG code to create a service that fit into Amazon.com's shopping network.

Stephen O'Grady a senior analyst with Redmonk said while many organizations prefer to do it all themselves, for some companies the catalog is an attractive idea.

"You can start from a framework and for some organizations it will save a great deal of development time," O'Grady said.

Over time the catalog is expected to include more than 3,000 templates, tools, and reusable Web service code, according to Carter.

Among the resources included at its inception are the IBM Information Framework Process Models, which are financial services models for regulatory alignment and workflow automation through best practices.

Others include an insurance application architectural blueprint, a WebSphere Business Modeler for industry specific projects, and a WebSphere DataStage TX Industry Pack for HL7 to integrate health care data formats with legacy infrastructures.

Some of the resources, all of which use SOA standards, will be free and open source while some have fees attached.

The catalog is available now at ibm.com/soa/soabusinesscatalog.