10/29/07 :: [SOA] AN inconvenient truth [permalink]
Richard reacted to my exchange with Nick. Let me be very clear, I am not here to hide anything, mislead or lie. I think my track record over the last 6 years or so of blogging speaks for itself. I am not here to prevent people to speak up in any way either. I am proud to be a citizen of the country of Voltaire (and Sarkozy) and I will always defend anyone's right to speak even if his or her ideas could be inconvenient to me.
It is not however because you have a blog that you bear no responsibilities and you can use and abuse the rhetoric to inject guidance without rationale. If you want to call this censorship or self-censorship you are free to do so, but we must be careful using this kind of words. They bear power. You say: "Nick didn't say that Enterprise SOA was impossible, he implied that it was difficult." Really? Are you sure that most of the readers did in fact understood difficult and not impossible?
I don't have issue with the statement in itself: "Enterprise SOA [is] a distant fantasy for many enterprises". A statement can be true or false (even both depending on context). I do take issue however when someone comes up with a 3 line example, a catchy term "semantic dissonance" and then conclude so lightly that Enterprise SOA is a distant fantasy for many. Who wins with this kind of language? Who pays the price for this kind of language? Is that statement representing the necessary dose of pessimism that we all need? Is it the adequate level to debate? What if all debates were at that level?
I do think that this industry will make a major step forward for itself and for its customers when this kind of language will become a distant noise. If you want to call it censorship, call it so, but it is not. A debate has value when arguments have merit, otherwise the debate does not exist, it is just two people babbling. If people want to start a debate on Enterprise SOA, bring it on. Debates are both healthy and necessary. If SOA is the wrong direction, so be it. I don't mind being proven wrong, because I consider it a win each time the truth surfaces, no matter how inconvenient it is.
Finally, you will note that Nick never went back to his example and looked at how it could be solved with SOA technologies or even clarified to show that in fact it cannot be solved. In other words, the central piece of argumentation did not matter, he went on in all directions except the definitive one, the solution to the problem he exposed. Are you telling me that no one at Microsoft can solve that process variant problem? BS.
(I wanted to add some humor using the theme of "Global Melting of IT" but considering what I have said, I tried to keep humor away for today).