Some of the books in this annotated bibliography on enterprise integration are dated now, but most of them are still relevant because they're not limited to a specific technology. I own almost all of the books listed here and have read all of the good ones :-) Also see books I authored or co-authored.

	Enterprise SOA : Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices Dirk Krafzig, Karl Banke, Dirk Slama Prentice Hall PTR, 2004
	When the authors claim that the book is based on their collective experiences since 1998, I believe them. The book avoids specific technologies and instead focuses on architectural trade-offs and solutions, such as coupling, concurrency control and the issues with distributed 2-phase commit (it is not a "manager" book). The "Recommendations for SOA Architects" are excellent. They discuss general advice and then show how it translates into a real life scenario. If you are interested in the "A" of SOA , get this one. www.enterprise-soa.com
	Web Services Alonso, Casati, Kuno, Machiraju Springer, 2003
	I found this one at Gary Cornell's (APress CEO) house. Unfortunately Springer books are often harder to find in stores since they focus mostly on the academic market. I really enjoy the accuracy and depth of the discussion in this book -- there is no hand waving here! Still it is an easy read with good illustrations. Recommended for SOA architects.
	Web Services Platform Architecture Weerawarana, Curbera, Leymann, Storey, Ferguson Prentice Hall PTR, 2005
	This one just came out -- just got my copy. If you are interested in a comprehensive, easy to digest walkthrough of the most popular WS-* standards, this is the right book to get. The book makes a good case for the existing specs, explains why they exist and how they relate to each other.
	Perspectives on Web Services : Applying SOAP, WSDL and UDDI to Real-World Projects Zimmermann, Tomlinson, Peuser Springer, 2003
	Just got this one. I like the idea of applying different perspectives: business, training, architecture, development, operations. It highlights the impact of SOA on different parts of the organization. It appears, though, that each perspectives targets a different audience so the book has become pretty broad in scope. Time to sit down and read... :-)
	Service-Oriented Architecture : A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services Thomas Erl Prentice Hall PTR, 2004
	This book is setup as a collection of "Strategies" and "Best Practices" around XML, Web Services and SOA. I wish some of these strategies went into a little more detail, but then it is a broad topic area and the book is already over 500 pages. I would have scratched the technology overview chapters (XML, WS, WS-*) in favor of more in-depth discussion of the strategies.
	Essential Business Process Modeling Michael Havey O'Reilly, 2005
	New book on a familiar topic. However, this one adds a fresh perspective by looking at BPM in the context of SOA and Web services. I like it because it strikes a nice balance between theory and practice. We get to see a brief overview of the theoretical foundation, common design patterns and standards work. A nice and accurate read.
	Business Process Execution Language Matjaz B. Juric Packt Publishing, 2004
	One of the first (the first?) tool-independent books on BPEL. The book is a fairly easy read and uses many examples -- definitely beats reading the spec! Still, I would have wished the book would show more common usage scenarios using the more advanced features like correlation, convoys (the BizTalk term for multiple receives), compensation and fault handling. These concepts look simple in terms of language syntax but can give serious headaches when used in combination. Nevertheless, at this time this book is likely the best printed introduction into BPEL. More info and a free sample chapter can be found at www.bpelbook.com
	Loosely Coupled: The Missing Pieces of Web Services Doug Kaye RDS Press, 2003
	A refreshing look at Web services. Instead of wading through APIs we get to read about the core principles at work in Service-Oriented Architectures in a technology-neutral jargon-free way. It does not have quite the technical depth of "Enterprise SOA" but makes for a good overview.
	Production Workflow: Concepts and Techniques Frank Leymann, Dieter Roller Prentice Hall PTR, 1999
	With the current focus on orchestration (read BPEL), workflow books are coming back into vogue. It turns out that Frank could actually be considered one of the "grandfathers" of BPEL as he was the driving force behind IBM's WSFL which in turn merged with Microsoft's XLANG into BPEL. I have not read the whole book yet but Chapter 7 on distributed transactions alone is worth getting it. This area tends to be dominated by hand waving so reading this precise treatment was truly refreshing.
	Principles of Transaction Processing Philip Bernstein, Eric Newcomer Morgan Kaufmann, 1997
	Think transactions are for databases? Think again! Transactions in distributed and asynchronous systems are a very important topic. Most importantly you can't just decree "two-phase commit" for everything, but have to reach deeper into the toolbox to get a system that provides loose coupling, high throughput and consistency. This book has good chapters on Transaction Processing Communications, Queued Transaction Processing, and, yes, Two-phase commit. Also, it shows us that we can still learn quite a bit from LU 6.2.
	Enterprise Services Architecture Dan Woods O'Reilly, 2003
	This is essentially a marketing title from SAP, so I was skeptical a first, especially after noticing the one-star rating on Amazon. I have to say though that this book appears to give a good high-level overview on how to get an organization to think in more service-oriented terms. Now obviously this is a high-level (think Gartner or Big 5) book targeted at technology strategists who will not want to read a SOAP spec. My first impression (not done reading yet) is that the book does a good job targeting that audience. A book you might want to hand your boss.
	.NET Web Services: Architecture and Implementation with .NET Keith Ballinger Addison-Wesley, 2003
	Amongst the technology-specific Web services books, I quite like this one because it does not simply walk through all the API features, but also gives useful architectural advice.
	Web Service Patterns: Java Edition Paul Monday Apress, 2003
	More of a tutorial on Apache Axis than a patterns book, it nevertheless presents relevant architectural guidance for Web services development. The book includes some nice examples on how to implement pub-sub with Web services. If you are looking for a tutorial on how to build a real Web-services application considering relevant architectural trade-offs, this book will be a good guide.
	Architecting Web Services William L. Oellermann Apress, 2001
	I always cringe when I see a book with "architecting" in the title that spends 40 pages on "Web Services Architecture" followed by 130 pages on XML basics. The core of the book is a chapter on Web Services Models and a comprehensive example in Visual Basic.