"Microsoft thinks that SOA is all about XXX, but any fule kno that SOA is all about YYY" (Zapthink via ZDNet).
Microsoft architect John Evdemon protests: he thinks this is Moving the SOA Goalposts, and lists several conflicting statements about what SOA is all about.
If we are to believe the pundits, SOA has always been "all about" all sorts of things. Three years ago, Martin Fowler called this Service Oriented Ambiguity. See also post by David Ing Dude Where's My SOA?
In my post here on Ambiguity, I said we have to distinguish between diversity of explanation (sometimes it makes reasonable sense to emphasize different aspects of SOA for different audiences) and outright contradiction. For my part, I try to avoid saying that SOA is "all about" anything, because it sounds much too dogmatic and prone to contradiction.
Architecture concepts and principles evolve over time, and descriptions morph to better address stakeholder needs and pain points.
ReplyDeleteAnne Thomas Manes has an insightful blog posting on the acronym explosion and Fall 2007 post describing When Technology Matters in SOA.
Microsoft is slowly evolving their tooling to better enable service-oriented architecture principles and patterns.