I had the pleasure of attending Udi Dahan’s Advanced SOA course this winter. Udi is an experienced software architect, frequent blogger, the co-creator of the CQRS pattern, and the originator of NServiceBus. For years he has blogged on topics ranging from DDD to SOA to the benefits of message based architectures over traditional RPC.

Udi’s SOA course is 5 jam pact days during which he works tirelessly for his students, plowing the entire 8 hours each day on his feet. Roughly half of the the course is spent massaging existing assumptions so that students can approach SOA with a new perspective. The other half is spent explaining techniques born out of years of consulting and answering a bevy of questions along the way.

When I returned to work on Monday my coworkers asked me what I had learned. I realized I had no idea where to start. This is a common problem experienced by Udi’s graduates. It’s tough to share when back with the tribe. Part of this is because Udi has his own specific definitions for widely used terms like “service” and “domain model”. More though, Udi’s course is taught by Udi and lasts for five days because it takes that time and his experience to bake in these concepts. While he lets students have access to his voluminous slide deck, out of context of the talk they generate confusion.

The problem is how to “scale” Udi. There is some good news. Recently Udi has made available his entire SOA course as a series of purchasable videos. I haven’t had the opportunity to watch them; For an individual consultant they are a bit pricey, but for a corporation they are well priced and solves the knowledge transfer problem.

It’s been four months and I can feel the knowledge decay starting so I have decided to blog about what I have gleaned from it. I hope this series of posts makes you interested in Udi and in his work. Every serious architect in the .NET space should take his course not even if – but especially if you have been building systems for decades. These posts will only be my interpretation. Go to his course or purchase his videos for the real deal.