In Christoph Schittko's post about CapeClear's latest WSDL editor he writes

CapeClear recently released a new version of their free WSDL editor. The new version allows adding XML Schemas which, in my mind, was definitely a much needed feature...The only gripe I have is that the new version is no longer called WSDL Editor. Now it's the SOA editor

SOA is now a much overhyped and meaningless buzzword. The entire industry is hyping XML Web Services all over again without pointing out anything of much concrete worth. Microsoft is right up there as well with publications like Microsoft Architects Journal whose last issue had 3 of 5 articles with "Service Oriented" in the title with at least one other being probably the quintessential work on Service Oriented Architecture, Metropolis.

There are basically only 2 people's whose opinions about the mostly meaningless Service Oriented hoopla I consider worth anything. Pat Helland who was talking about service oriented architecures before the buzzword had a name and Don Box because he's the first person I've seen do a decent job of trying to distill the service oriented fundamentals (see A Guide to Developing and Running Connected Systems with Indigo).

Don's fundamentals

  • Boundaries are explicit
  • Services are autonomous
  • Services share schema and contract, not class
  • Service compatibility is determined based on policy

make a lot of sense to me. The only problem I have with Don is that he is working on Indigo which is anything from 1.5 to 2 years from shipping depending on who you're listening to but Microsoft is pimping SOA today. I've talked to him about doing a bit more writing service oriented development with existing technologies and even offered to cowrite if he can't find the time. Unfortunately I've been really really busy (we are short one PM and a dev on my immediate team, speaking of which WE ARE HIRING!!!) so haven't been very good at nagging him to do more writing. Hopefully once we lock down for Whidbey beta 1 I'll have some free time until the beta 2 deluge begins.


 

Thursday, 22 April 2004 04:34:41 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Dare,

See my blog for some comments on ASMX and the (non-)need to wait for Indigo.

Also, thanks so much for not accusing me of pimping SOA. The term is overused to the point of being meaningless and it saddens me when people I respect use it in normal speech.

I hate the hype machine as much as you do. I've just gotten good at ignoring it and trying to solve problems I find interesting.

DB
Monday, 26 April 2004 19:50:20 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
So, are services autonomous from just their consumers, or from other services as well? From the consumer perspective it doesn't matter since it can't "see" how the service is implemented. I am not sure if Don is trying to imply something about how the service is implemented, or simply the nature of the interface between a service and a consumer.
Mike Julier
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