Re: [service-orientated-architecture] Re: What is a Service? What is an Application?

[Keith Harrison-Broninski]

Ron Schmelzer wrote: Despite very amorphous and not very technically strict definitions of object, we still managed to grow, maintain, and justify the existence of Object-oriented architecture. Exactly!  We developed ORBs, OO design patterns, aspect-orientation, and so on without the slightest need for a rigorous definition of object.  Looking back, it seems clear now that it was a waste of time arguing over such typical issues as multiple inheritance (or any kind of inheritance).  We are now developing similar infrastructures, patterns and extension technologies for SOA without anyone needing to agree on what is a "service", since we all have an implicit shared aim: to build better distributed systems, leveraging the new opportunities offered by Internet technologies. Jan asks: what does this tell me (or imply) about the architectural constraints and....what am I supposed to take from the idea that The "distribution oriented architecture" is a way to create distributed software systems? I only suggested replacing SOA with DOA as a joke, of course.  However, for those of you who still want something to define, DOA does suggest a more useful question than "what is a service", a question that as Ron suggests is aligned towards what rather than how: What is a distributed system? A quick Google turned up some very shaky definitions.  So here's a starting point: a system in which storage and/or processing may occur in more than one place.  But is this sufficient or even necessary for distribution?  And what is meant by a "place"? This question may well be as irrelevant to the future of computing as asking "what is a service".  But it does at least bear more directly on the essence of the problem we are all working on.  And the question relates to work at the forefront of academic research into Computer Science; witness the new bigraph theory of Robin Milner (of pi-calculus fame), which seeks to identify the relationship between "where you are physically" and "what you can access virtually". -- All the best Keith http://keith.harrison-broninski.info YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS  Visit your group "service-orientated-architecture" on the web.    To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]    Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.