SOA, A Perspective (namely mine!)

One of the great things about SOA (or Service Oriented Architecture) is that it means many things to many people. I am sure that if you ask a room full of architects what SOA is you will give one of two things (or potentially both) a room full of different answers and / or an argument about what it is. If you consult the many many resources on the Web (Amazon, Wikipedia, Google etc) you will find one hundred and one resources all focused on the same thing. After voyaging through a number of these I thought that I would articulate my thoughts..

First and for most I am of the opinion that SOA is more of a belief than a collection of technologies (although the vendors would say 'buy my product and you have a SOA!'). Having seen SOA implementations from the inside and also been on the outside witnessing the hardships I can say that this opinion has been re-enforced. So what do I mean by this, well, over the next few blogs I will outline my thinking in the SOA space. I have jotted down a few thoughts as to what I am going to articulate.

So what is SOA anyway (you could read the wiki!)

• Business Processes
  
• Component based development
  
• EAI
  

Challenges

• Making it last, how SOA becomes a strategic aim
  
• It's all about the money
  
• Skills, Skills and more skills
  

So much to blog.... So little time..