[service-orientated-architecture] Differences between SOA and MVC?

[Ron Schmelzer]

Hi all -- I've really enjoyed your posts and thoughts on the relationship between SOA, REST, and Web Services. Indeed, we just posted our thoughts on this topic at http://www.zapthink.com/report.html?id=ZAPFLASH-2006712. I'd love your feedback. But, here's another (possibly rabbit hole) discussion. As you know, Service-Oriented Architecture is an approach for designing systems that allow for continuous change through loosely-coupled, composite, and contracted Services. (one of many good definitions). This is not a software architecture, but rather an overarching enterprise architecture that aims to create a level of abstraction for decomposing business process into finer grained Services. Of course, it's needless to say that SOA is what you do and not what you buy -- hopefully we all understand that by now! Model-View-Controller (MVC), on the other hand, IS a software architecture (or software design pattern as defined in the Wikipedia). Many of the ideas of MVC very closely parallel the ideas of SOA, especially the notion of the SOA metamodel, which separates Service design into three aspects: the business model, Service model, and Implementation models. The MVC approach separates application design into the Model (domain-specific representation), View (rendering of model for interaction), and Controller (event and action handling between View and Model).  Likewise, MVC is also what you do and not what you buy and can be implemented using a variety of technologies including Java, Ruby on Rails, and others. I would like to know what the folks on this list think about the relationship between MVC and SOA. Is one an aspect of the other? What aspects of loose coupling are present in MVC that are not present in SOA... or vice-versa? We have our own (strong) opinions on this matter and probably will publish an opinion piece in response in an upcoming ZapFlash, but it would be good to understand what sort of diversity of thought there is on this topic. It might be that we all agree on the role of MVC as separated from SOA, but then again, the amount of disagreement on what we thought were fairly basic ideas continues to surprise me. Looking forward to your vigorous and well thought-out responses! Ron -- _____________________________________________________________ Ronald Schmelzer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Analyst ZapThink LLC Direct: 781-577-2779 / Main: 781-207-0203 __._,_.___ SPONSORED LINKS Computer software Computer aided design software Computer job Soa Service-oriented architecture 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. __,_._,___