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By Eric Saxby While there are resources on why other companies have made the transition to SOA, and end-game service boundaries may be clear, there are few resources on how to make progress towards SOA without sinking an entire team or stopping concurrent product development. Faced with a growing codebase, slower tests and performance issues, we've extracted services from our large Rails app the way we do everything else: iteratively. I'll walk through what we did right, and what we almost did wrong. It took a while for Eric to come around to programming, trying a few other careers first. Now he focuses on the intersection of code and process, using buzzwords such as TDD, agile and devops to describe his ham-fisted hammering on keyboards. He finds it most interesting when code fails, and why. Help us caption & translate this video! http://amara.org/v/FG06/
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In the presentation titled "An Iterative Approach to Service Oriented Architecture" at RailsConf 2014, Eric Saxby discusses the challenges and strategies of transitioning from a monolithic Rails application to a service-oriented architecture (SOA). He emphasizes the importance of an iterative approach instead of a complete overhaul, enabling teams to maintain product development while evolving their architecture. Key points discussed include: - **Initial Challenges**: Eric shares a hypothetical yet relatable scenario of a startup struggling with a tangled codebase, highlighting the rapid feature launches without proper design leading to chaos and deployment issues. - **Transition to SOA**: The presentation illustrates how, amidst failing and chaotic deployments, some teams recognized the need for SOA as a solution to enhance scalability, organization, and to isolate complex functionality behind clean APIs. - **Iterative Development**: Eric stresses that successful transitions come from deploying small changes rapidly, using feature flags to reduce risk and improve feedback loops. He outlines the necessity of refactoring and continuous learning from mistakes to adapt effectively. - **Trust and Collaboration**: He points out that the lack of trust between teams (Engineering and Product) often hinders success, calling attention to the need for mutual trust to facilitate efficient work and communication. - **Practical Examples**: Eric provides real project examples where they developed a data service and login functionality iteratively. He shares insights about success from the engineering perspective but also contrasts it with the product team’s perspectives, showcasing the tension that can arise from different definitions of success. - **Takeaways from Experience**: Highlights the importance of agility, being open to failures, and learning from them throughout the process. Also emphasizes that SOA is not a cure-all; it serves as one tool in solving broader organizational challenges. In conclusion, Saxby's talk encapsulates how an iterative mindset paired with gradual enhancements enabled his team to navigate the complexities of evolving their application architecture without jeopardizing ongoing development, focusing on continuous delivery, collaboration, and learning from each deployment to foster a more scalable, resilient system.
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