10/07/07 :: [SOA] SOA Misconceptions II [permalink]
Richard disagreed with my post today. I forgot that if "you can't google something" or "people were not blogging about it" it does not mean it did not happen. So I am ready to believe that some of the principles of SOA were used before 1998 (after all SGML was invented in 1969). I don't want to open a large debate, I just want to point out that in the last 10 years there has been a wave of innovations that made it simpler to build a Service Oriented Architecture. SOA is a systematic approach of factoring IT assets into reusable elements which can be composed into different solutions. If we can leave it there I'd be happy.
The point I was trying to make earlier is that a lot of people would like others to believe that SOA is easy, "you have done it before and by the way, it's as simple as assembling Legos". The reality, as Richard points it out is that hardly anybody has done it before. I think he would also agree that these new technologies are not that easy to master. Individually, yes they are not rocket science (by far), but as a whole they are challenging for developers and architects accustomed to do things a certain way. When I look at the CBDI SAE SOA Metamodel, the last thing I can think about is "Legos". The metamodel captures very well the information related to a service. To me this looks a lot more like a "part's" description rather than a "common Lego interface". With real parts, I can construct real helicopters, with Legos I can construct mockups.
I like Jeff's point as he discusses SOA budgets:
I've said it before and I'll say it again... SOA Transformations cost big bucks, take years to complete but in the end are worth the investment.