Matjaz Juric Interview

PP: Overall, how was your experience of writing your book?

MJ: Writing a book, even a technical one, is always a special experience, which requires quite a lot of time and dedication. In year 2003, when we started preparing the outline and the materials for the BPEL book, this technology was emerging and it wasn’t clear whether it will become mainstream. However we already had quite some experience and believed that the BPEL and SOA is the way to go. Fortunately at that time I’ve already had experience with previous books, which has helped.

PP: How did our staff help - what kind of things did they help you with, do you think there were some things they could have helped with more?

MJ: Writing for Packt is special, because the editors and other staff are very helpful, first in preparation of the outline, then in defining the schedule, and in finding other authors, if needed. Finally they take care of the reviewing process and make sure that the book is reviewed by people who really understand the topic. Those people usually provide very helpful comments for improving the content. Otherwise Packt stuff in my opinion is very open and flexible and you can easily discuss with them various things that come up during writing.

PP: Was there anything particularly interesting that happened during the writing of the book?

MJ: Well, definitely the most interesting thing was that we had the BPEL book almost finished and we’ve used the Collaxa BPEL Server. Just before book release Oracle acquired Collaxa and the product became Oracle BPEL Process Manager. Of course we had to change quite a lot in the one chapter that was dedicated to this product.

PP: Did it overshadow personal life in any way? How did your deal with that?

MJ: As I’ve already mentioned, writing a book requires a lot of dedication and time and of course you have to make compromises with your personal life. If is helpful if your family supports you, and I’d like to thank here all those who have supported me.

PP: How did you get on managing your time?

MJ This is not such a problem. Once you know the topic you’ll write about, it is really not that difficult anymore. It actually becomes very interesting and sometimes it is more difficult to stop than to start.

PP: What benefit did writing a book bring to you in BPEL community?

MJ: A book definitely gives you a certain level of recognition in the community. The BPEL book that Packt published was and is still the only book on that particular topic (in addition to BPEL Cookbook, also from Packt), as far as I know. Also BPEL is becoming more and more popular.

PP: Do you have any tips for other authors, or tricks that you learnt while writing, that you'd like to share?

MJ: Well, the most important tip is to get really familiar with the technologies you are writing about, in best case on a real-world example. That way you’ll identify advantages, but also disadvantages – and those are important for readers that would like to use a certain technology in production.