Top 5 Courses to Learn Microservices and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) in Java - Best Of Lot

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Microservice Architecture are essential skills for modern Java developers as most of the Java applications developed today follow SOA and Microservice architecture or their variants. Good knowledge of SOA architecture not only help you to understand your current project better but also can give your career a boost, especially to senior Java developers who want to become software or solution architects. In the past, I have shared some books for aspiring software architects, and you can also use these courses along with those to master your architecture and solution design skills.

Anyway, SOA architecture provides an alternative to monolith architecture and focuses on small applications providing dedicated service. Some of the common examples of SOA architecture are Web Services and Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture, which is very common in Java world.

When I was learning SOA last year, I was looking for an online training course which can provide me enough theory and some real-world practical experience, but I didn't find a single one which fits my requirements.

Most of the online courses which I found suffered from two main problems: being too technical from the start, and taking too much of a theoretical approach, while I was needed a balanced course which is neither too much theoretical, neither too thin on theory.

My quest for the best course to learn SOA brought me a couple of useful ones like the Service-Oriented Architecture course on Coursera, which is also part of the Software Design and Architecture Specialization and offered by the University of Alberta.

This course tackles both problems, and it will help make you understand the business behind SOA before it jumps into technology. As you'll not only learn about the fundamentals of SOA, including architecture, services, service types, reuse, and composition but also see some real-world solutions built using SOA.

Finally, you'll learn about the importance of designing a standard semantic model for all SOA services, and after completing the course, you will have knowledge of all the tools needed to implement the SOA architecture in your project.

5 Best SOA and Microservice Courses for Programmers

If you want, you can directly jump on the Service Oriented Architecture course on Coursera it's a good one but if you need more choices, here are some of the other useful SOA courses for programmers.

1. Microservices Architecture

This online course will teach you how to transform your monolith into organized, maintainable, and scalable services, leveraging the microservices architecture. It's created by Packt publication, and it's packed with some of the most up-to-date information on Microservice architecture and SOA, including Serverless architecture which is taking the software architecture by storm. The course is packed with 4.5 hours of content and also provides a certificate of completion.

2. Service-Oriented Architecture

This is my favorite and probably the best course to learn Service Oriented Architecture online. As I told you before its based on an understanding of architectural styles and you will review architectures for web applications before exploring the basics of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in two approaches: Web Services (WS*) and Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture.

The course is also part of Software Design and Architecture Specialization , which is a recommended resource for Java developer aspiring to become a software architect.

The specialization also includes a Capstone Project in which you will connect a Java-based Android application with Elasticsearch, a web service with a REST application programmer interface (API).

3. Real-World SOA: Analysis and Design

This is a two-part course by Mohamad Halabi on Pluralsight which is seriously suitable for anyone who wants to understand correct SOA. These two courses take a practical approach to teach you what SOA truly is, what problem it is intended to solve when it is a fit for an organization, and how to implement it correctly.

4. Real-World SOA: Design and Implementation

This course is a continuation of the course 'Real World SOA: Analysis and Design,' or In that course, you studied SOA analysis and overall design, here you will get more detailed about implementation.

5. Evolution of Microservices

This is a free online course from Udemy which compares Monolith Architecture vs. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) vs. Microservices, and that's why I have included in this list.

It's a small course, but very good in understand the pros and cons of both SOA and Microservice architecture. It will help you to answers common questions about SOA and Microservice like by the end of the course, you will have a fair amount of idea on

What is wrong with Monolith looks like? How the industry arrived at SOA? What are the issues with SOA? Why Microservices? Advantages of Microservices and Design considerations need to be made while adopting Microservices.

That's all about some of the best online training courses to learn SOA or Service Oriented Architecture. Once you have background knowledge of SOA fundamentals, you can always join classes to learn more about Web Service or REST Architecture, two of SOA's real-world implementation. Similarly, if you know about Microservices, you can easily modify your application to take advantage of container-based architecture which is both easy to deploy and scale on Cloud.

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P.S. - If you are looking for a free course to learn Java design patterns, which are also important for Software architects then you can also check out Java Design Patterns and Architecture course on Udemy. It's completely free and has loads of useful information on using design patterns for Java programmers.