By now, everyone knows how skeptical I am about case study articles such as these. Rich Seeley is a prolific producer of these and most of his articles hold some nugget of usefulness.
Alas, the vast majority of them simply have the term "SOA" in them and explain next to nothing about what makes them SO. Instead, most of the stories sound like classic integration projects with the SOA label slapped on them. --- In [email protected], Gervas Douglas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > <<We at SearchSOA.com > <http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/home/0,289692,sid26,00.html> have > a number of SOA user stories in the works at the moment and it > strikes me that we could just about churn out a case study a day at > this point in time. Last month at the IBM Impact conference, I > blogged <http://soa-talk.blogs.techtarget.com/2008/04/10/ibm- > showing-off-soas-impact/>that seemingly every type of business > imaginable has been embracing service orientation. With the content of the articles, it is hard to make this determination. Certainly they are embracing SOA as a term to use, but beyond that it is difficult to see the SO-ness of most of the cases. > We're encountering more big SOA projects than ever before and > you've got to wonder what the working rationale is these days for > an app dev project that isn't loosely coupled and conformant with > an enterprise architecture. What's the counter argument? Obviously > it can be less expensive in the short term and less complex to > throw applications together in piecemeal fashion, but over time > that approach becomes costly. It's also a mess from an engineering > standpoint. > > Here are some of the most recent examples: > > * Cars.com turned to SOA "order-to-fulfillment and order-to-cash portions of the SOA initiative" That is the only snippet that even hints at the services. Everything else is SOA benefit boilerplate (agility, speed, etc.). "quick integration of data feeds between the two companies" What is SO about "integration of data feeds?" > * Deutsche Post used service orientation > to blend Java and .NET apps in a CRM system This is a case where SO seems completely absent, save for the claim about SOA being implemented using Java, which seems kinda low-level. > * Con-way plans on building mobile apps > for its transportation fleet based on the composite > development its pursued over the past decade A pretty good overview of the evolution toward SO. > * Business process orchestration has become a key > for online real estate company Move Inc. Speaks of "migrating to SOA" and "pragmatic SOA" but describes neither. > * SOA taught the Delaware Electric Cooperative > the importance of BPM More so than BPM, the lessons learned seem to be "do not focus only on your area/application but also consider the bigger picture." Plus, with the focus on processes instead of services, it seems likely that process changes down the road may really upset the apple cart. "The statement of work might be that data needs to be pushed from a field engineering application to the customer information system and then on to the accounting system." That doesn't sound SO at all. Pushing data from app to app is tried and true--and quite old. > * Insurance industry information provider MIB Inc. rebuilt its > entire business around SOA "So we decided to move from monolithic applications to basically a composition of services that clients will also be able to compose on their side. It will be a lightweight app server system. So we basically moved to a combination of SOA and REST." Up until this quote, the article was sounding mostly like a simple technology refresh. But alas, there is no detail about the services created. > You can find links to 18 other SOA case studies in our top stories > of 2007 compilation > The number of users who can document proven success with SOA is > exploding. Does it deliver as advertised in every situation? No, > nothing does and that's why we go out and try to find the users > with best practices to share. This is a complex field, but the > ranks of users who've found the benefits justify tackling the > complexity are growing almost daily. > > Here's a question for those who don't count SOA as a core > competency in their app dev shop: why? Would an enterprise that has really embraced SO even have an "app dev shop?" ;-) I guess my point is that these and other "SOA" case studies don't seem to be very SO. The services are rarely mentioned. The descrptions of details sound exactly like integration projects of old. So I'm not sure we can say "SOA is exploding," at least not with these articles as evidence. These articles show that the usage of the term SOA is exploding, but the application of SO principles and the creation of services is not apparent. -Rob
