SOA? Hey! How 'bout it? and Service Packs Too.

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The world is abuzz with acronyms. One that's getting a bit overheated IMO is Service Oriented Architecture -- "SOA".

Why is it that architect - developer people get into this "Baffle 'em with Bullshit" mindset anyway? Let's keep it simple, folks! What is "SOA" anyway?

I prefer the simple definition:

"A service-oriented architecture is a collection of services that communicate with each other. The services are self-contained and do not depend on the context or state of the other service. They work within a distributed systems architecture."

Now that's pretty simple; it doesn't baffle us with high-falutin whitepaper B.S., and we feel better since most of us are already doing this kind of stuff anyway.

Note that it doesn't say "whose" system, or "what brand" or even what language / platform. SOA has been around for 20 years. The only real difference is that we have more interoperability in the form of XML / SOAP, that's why the buzzword. It seems these days that anything that uses SOAP / XML/ loosely-connected anything (even if it just "says" it uses it but doesn't even really do so) gets to be knighted as the latest "AJAX". (Actually I suggested "AHAB" - A lotta Hype And Bullshit.)

First we had the Gartner Gurus touting this stuff all over the place charging customers to advise them on this next "big software strategy". Then the Microsoft Maharishis got ahold of it and found themselves a new Mantra. They said that the "A" in SOA shouldn't be there, because it wasn't about "Architecture". Now they are happy with the "A" and they've got a new mantra, but it's still the same Whitepaper B.S.

The first service-oriented architecture for many Windows platform developers in the past was with the use of DCOM.

You guys need to climb down off those ivory towers and just get down to the basics that any of us with average intelligence can easily understand. When it gets to start sounding like some sort of new "religion", and there are more whitepapers on it than there are code samples, you know you've gone too far. I got one for ya:

SANTA:
Service Architecture Networked To Administrivia

"Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." -- Albert Einstein

Einstein, a German immigrant who didn't even speak English as his native language, did a pretty good job of keeping it simple for the "folks".


On a slightly different note, I read Scott Wiltamuth's post about the upcoming Service Packs for VS.NET 2003 and VS.NET 2005. The post itself is short and basically just informational. What's revealing is the list of comments! Besides the usual anti-MS drivel, there are some very interesting suggestions and ideas. Interestingly, I didn't see a single response to any of the long list of comments by Mr. Wiltamuth.

Hope you guys are listening out there in Redmond.

Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous1:58 PM

    I completely agree. I think that computer science should be as exact as possible. But SOA is like UML, everybody understands it in different way. But on the other hand for some people equations are easier to understand then text but some prefer
    just words. Maybe there is more and more poets/writes among computer scientists?

    ReplyDelete
  2. peterbromberg7:22 PM

    Pawel,

    I think your code is a lot better than your prose! Thanks for the nice comment!

    ReplyDelete

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