<<Almost a year ago, BEA Systems Inc., IBM Corp., Oracle Corp., SAP AG and four other vendors all put aside their respective differencesin public, anywayto form an informal SOA advocacy alliance.
Last week, nine additional vendors threw their hats into the SOA-advocacy ring, joining with founding members BEA, IBM, Oracle, and SAP to officially kick off Open SOA and Web site (http://www.osoa.org). The fleshed-out Open SOA member roll includes industry heavyweights Sun Microsystems Inc., Tibco Software, Progress Software, and Software AG, among others. The group is currently spearheading two proposed SOA specificationsService Component Architecture (SCA) and Service Data Objects (SDO)which it plans to make available to others in the industry on a "royalty free" licensing basis. Presumably, Open SOA will offer the same terms to Microsoft Corp., whichnot surprisinglyremains a prominent hold-out. Gartner analysts Massimo Pezzini, Yefim Natis, Kimihiko Iimijima, and Roy Schulte see in this a parallel to another vendor grassroots effort that kicked off nearly 10 years agoand against which Microsoft famously aligned itself. "The addition of nine vendors (most notably Sun Microsystems ) means the group looks like the one that formed around Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) almost a decade ago and helped to propel it to industry prominence," they write. "As was the case then, Microsoft is staying away; it plans to release Windows Communication Foundation, its own model for SOA." That being said, the Gartner quartet note, there are some important differences. "[T]his new alliance differs from its predecessor in that it is not focused on a single language. By adding Sun, the group has solidified compatibility with products that use Java Business Integration. The move will also help attract vendors in the Java community and increase the specifications' standing." What's at stake? Plenty, analysts say. Proponents say SCA and SDO will provide a language-independent programming model for SOA. Open SOA offers a programming model, the Gartner analysts note, but relies on standard communication protocols, includinginitially, at leastWeb services, the Java Messaging Service, and the J2EE Connector Architecture. "The biggest gap in the specificationslack of interoperation with Microsoft's .NEThas not yet been addressed, although many vendors plan to support Microsoft technology. Addressing .NET is vital to the effort's success, as almost all organizations will have to integrate .NET applications in their SOA," they indicate.>> You can find this at: <http://www.adtmag.com/esArticle.aspx?a=2054> Gervas Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/service-orientated-architecture/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
