It is no exaggeration to say that John Crupi, chief technology officer of Sun Enterprise Web Services Global Practice, and Dan Malks, principal engineer of Sun Enterprise Web Services Global Practice, know a thing or two about service oriented architecture (SOA). After all, they wrote the book on Java software development — literally.

Their best seller, Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies, changed the way Java technology developers architect systems by emphasizing reusability. John Vlissides, researcher at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, described the book as "the intellectual mortar of J2EE software construction."

Today, Crupi and Malks help leading companies architect large enterprise systems. Due to their work at the Sun Enterprise Web Services Global Practice, Crupi and Malks have become big SOA proponents. In this wide-ranging interview, they explain how to build an SOA and why pragmatic SOA really rocks.

Inner Circle (IC): It seems like everyone is talking about SOA these days. Why?