Data SOA

Over the past 3 months Graham and I have been in many conversations with some of Canada’s top companies and the buzz has been about SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).  So as part of an initiative with a client we came up with a view that seems to mesh with the current goings on with the direction of the technology.  So in this post Graham and I will give our two cents worth focusing on:

  • What is it?
  • Why – what is the value?
  • What does it mean?
  • How do apply this to my organization

So that I don’t steal Graham’s thunder, I am going to start with the why.

Is this a fad from the Software and Consulting Vendors?

Though it may seem that this is a new hot trend that should help drive the re-writing of companies IT architecture or the creation of a new Data Services Layer, I don’t think so.

A lot of the clients that I talked to that have either implemented SOA or are in the process of doing so are doing it for a variety of reasons.  The first is that Web Services have been to structured and restrictive for their and their services users and this presents a possibly more flexible method (this needs to still be proved out).  The other and more pertinent is re-use.  This is not new.  Object oriented programming is very old, but hard to accomplish and maintain.  The cost savings are massive if done properly – this I think is the Utopian silver bullet.

I don’t believe in silver bullets as a norm, so I think this hypothesis needs to be played out and tested – this is what I am seeing my clients doing.

Now think about it for data.  If this same idea of SOA for application or web services is of value, then it should be able to apply to what is not so commonly referred to as Data SOA.

I welcome your comments, ideas and look forward to sharing with you our view of this evolution.

  1. Stephen Reply

    Thanks for your note. This was to be the first entry as we explore into what is behind the hype and to your point dealing with the hype. Feel free to share your view of what Data SOA is, because, Oracle, BEA, IBM and Teradata along with a meriad of middleware vendors all have their view.

  2. GIGI Reply

    This makes no sense to me. It sounds like a lot of hype-speak. You should start by telling us ‘what’ SOA is rather than the hyped up ‘why’.
    What is this really?

Leave a Reply to GIGI Cancel reply

captcha *