Rob, What I'd say is that the _execution context_ in SOA is the integration and it is an _enabler_ for consumers and producers to be brought together, but the integration is not _in itself_ SOA. In many cases integration is a _required_ facility for the interaction of consumer and producer but in itself it doesn't represent either the consumer or the producer.
To use a WOA analogy, TCP/IP is the enabler but it isn't the REST bit. Steve 2008/12/22 Rob Eamon <[email protected]>: > +1. > > That's what I've been attempting to illustrate, though Mike has > phrased it (via ZT statements) in a much better way than I. > > "If however the point of interaction is a higher level business > service contract, the individual integration points become less > relevant." > > But still there and still important--without them, nothing happens. > > SOA is a form of integration. But integration is not the primary > focus. > > Perhaps the objection to "SOA is integration" is rooted in the common > use of integration capabilities: resolving syntactic and semantic > differences between components. Does "integration" not exist when > there are no differences between these? What if the end points > resolved these differences internally (client A must create document > Z as defined by service B's interface)? Is that not still > integration, just accomplished by the end-points rather than an > intermediary? > > -Rob > > --- In [email protected], "Nibeck, > Mike" <mike.nib...@...> wrote: >> >> Zapthink has a very specific take on SOA and integration. They >> state the following: >> - One goal of SOA - Integration as a byproduct of Service >> composition >> >> - One Goal of legacy integration: building Services to support this >> goal, NOT connecting systems to address a particular business need >> >> Their primary point being that in a SO architecture, integration is >> simply one of the steps or parts of a >> composition, and it no longer gets seen as a distinct and separate >> set of processes or technologies. In most cases, >> integration efforts are designed to somehow "join" two or more >> disparate systems. If however the point of interaction >> is a higher level business service contract, the individual >> integration points become less relevant. >> >> You will always have the need to interact with remote systems, and >> the lower level details will still be very similar to traditional >> integration efforts, but these efforts will exist in a larger >> context, the service model, that will hopefully not be directly >> impacted by the individual integration efforts. >> >> _mike > >
