WOA is what SOA should have been...and can still become.
Sent to you by ironick via Google Reader: SOA is ovah?! via Web Oriented Architecture blog by William Rice on 11/9/07 Is the SOA story over? By Wesley in der Maur, William Rice, Ernst Siegert For years we have been talking about SOA, and some of us have even been implementing it. Or at least trying to do so. In practice, SOA appears to be failing to deliver on its promises. Why is this? Have we all been fooled by a flawed concept? We don?t think so. The concept is ok, and when properly implemented a Service Oriented Architecture should be able to provide the benefits of cost reduction, short time to market, flexibility etc. The problem is not with the concept, but with the execution! To successfully implement a SOA, organizations need to really go for this ? no holding back. To get this kind of commitment, the desire has to come from within the business units and must not be another example of ?IT driving the business?. Such has been the case with SOA, we might say. To successfully deliver the concept and promises of SOA, a new kid on the block appears to be coming to the rescue. This is the concept of WOA ? Web Oriented Architecture. One definition (from Gartner) of Web Oriented Architecture: an architectural style that is a substyle of SOA based on the architecture of the WWW with the following additional constraints: globally linked, decentralized, and uniform intermediary processing of application state via self-describing messages. A few statements from the blogosphere further explaining the concept of WOA: - Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA) may emerge as a ?lightweight version of SOA? - Gartner?s Nick Gall - Dion Hinchcliffe?s WOA vision: ?the SOA with reach? - Pragmatic Service-Oriented Architecture: Introducing the WOA/Client (Architecture Journal) Examples are to be seen everywhere. More and more companies are beginning to provide (sell) and integrate web services as offered over the internet in to their applications. Internet applications, used primarily for customer interaction at the moment, but also supporting internal business functions, such as Salesforce.com does for CRM processes. Other examples from our own experience are large insurance companies integrating a State-provided vehicle information service in their car insurance web applications and a large publishing company delivering functionality with integrated content as services for customers to integrate in their own portals. These examples show us the cost benefits of Web Oriented Architecture ? designing by ?mashing up? ? and the fact that it delivers new sources of income for companies. So, WOA is positioned as a subset of SOA, a ?lightweight? version. Lightweight because one makes use of what is already ?out there?: the architecture of the World Wide Web. Technology is proven, known and used by everyone. This means low risk, high interoperability and quick and easy to implement. And, most importantly, the business is acquainted with it. They already have been using it in everyday for many years now. So why not use it for the enterprise? Conclusion: with WOA paving the way by quickly showing successes and expanding the reach, the SOA concept will prove valid and its value. WOA is what SOA should have been. Please let us know what you think by commenting on this post. Things you can do from here: - Subscribe to Web Oriented Architecture blog using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
