

Ask: what the hell is service-oriented architecture? - henning

Here is the back cover blurb for a book on "service-oriented modeling" and service-oriented architecture.<p>Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is the hottest topic in the IT arena. Providing a comprehensive plan to interrelate business with technology, SOA combines the talents and skills of an entire organization, with its requisite needs and computing know-how. Presenting the necessary tools—processes, best practices, and standards—for developing a sound SOA, Service-Oriented Modeling: Service Analysis, Design, and Architecture introduces a service-oriented modeling framework that employs an agile and universal business and technology language to facilitate analysis, design, and architecture initiatives.<p>I have no clue what that means. I wonder: precisely what is that in terms of actual programs, bits, and bytes? Is it simple, flexible web services? Exposing programs as web services? Web services as a loose coupling technique of disparate systems? Throw me a bone here.
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bayareaguy
Here's an excerpt from a discussion on ACM Queue[1] between Jim Gray and
Werner Vogels on this:

 _We went through a period of serious introspection and concluded that a
service-oriented architecture would give us the level of isolation that would
allow us to build many software components rapidly and independently. By the
way, this was way before service-oriented was a buzzword. For us service
orientation means encapsulating the data with the business logic that operates
on the data, with the only access through a published service interface. No
direct database access is allowed from outside the service, and there's no
data sharing among the services._

[1] -
[http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=show...](http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=388)

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msahil
Another BUZZWORD created by BIGBULLS like IBM, Oracle, MIcrosoft etc. to scare
away the customers and make more money. Thats how they have been minting money
all these years... Technically SOA is not a rocket science, primarily uses
webservices but these companies have wrapped it around too much of BULLSHIT to
make things looks scarry so that customers would run towards them to adopt
SOA. Instead of trying to keep things simpler..they are making it more
complicated each day since i started follwing SOA 3 years back

