Service-oriented Architecture: A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services
Not a particularly challenging book on this subject. It starts with the basics and never really gets to the guts of developing SOA applications. However it does a good job of explaining the basics of the standards and key concepts, although it does over use very simple diagrams. I know a picture tells a thousand words, but in this case some of the pictures could be explained in 10 words without too much difficulty.
That said I found it very useful and particularly liked the concept maps, that showed how all of the various standards/services related to each other.
If you want a more ambitious book then Enterprise Service Bus by David Chappel, looks promising:
Bill has just given a very interesting 
In his 
James, author of the 
Imagine my surprise when the day after writing 
I am just blown away by 
I have speculated before on the subject of Microsoft’s options concerning competing with Linux, but it seems to receive little serious debate, so I thought I must be off track, either technically or commercially. In my view Microsoft would extend its Services For Unix product to comply with the Linux Standard Base requirements and would therefore support Linux applications. For many corporates this would be a dream come true, access to all of the Open Source applications that support either Windows, Linux or both, and of course it would also benefit both users and developers. However Microsoft have told me they have no interest in doing this (but they would wouldn’t they). So in that context it’s interesting to see this article by John Dvorak, 
I have spent probably 30% of my working life writing reports and presentations, and now the thought of writing them fills me with dread. At this point those who know me probably think I am going to write about arthritic hands, but no, its the medium that’s the problem. Having started to write a blog it’s difficult to contemplate another medium for writing, and having started working with mind maps and concept maps it’s difficult to go back to sequential presentations. I would happily accept wiki’s for collaborative authoring as an alternative to blogs, but blogs have the amazing benefit of providing the author with full control of content and presentation, and allow the author to build not just on their own knowledge but on the knowledge of others, “on the shoulders of giants” and all that. On the subject of giants