<<Duane Nickull, who is very active in the SOA and Web services
standards space, was incensed by an anonymous blog posting that savages
the efforts of standards bodies, and has published a rebuttal
<http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2009/01/soa-soup-hardly.html>
defending the work of these groups.
Since the offending post was anonymous and has the look and smell of an
aggregator site, I won't dignify it with a link. (I can't find an
original posting anywhere --- if any readers can identify the original
source, please let us know!)
*UPDATE:* The original criticism of SOA standards activities, The SOA
Soup <http://www.ebpml.org/blog/159.htm>, was /not/ anonymous and
originally posted at the ebpml.org site by Jean-Jacques Dubray. Thanks,
Rob Eamon, for pointing us to the correct source. And, certainly, some
of the issues raised deserve a healthy debate. (Without the name
calling, of course.)
Duane's defense
<http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2009/01/soa-soup-hardly.html> of SOA
standards bodies work deserves attention. There has been no shortage of
criticism of standards work over the years, and many in the industry
have even said that the volume of standards --- as we have seen with Web
services --- can be overwhelming and confusing.
Duane provides some clarity with a synopsis of the results of the work
on key standards within the SOA sphere thus far:
Open Group's SOA Reference Architecture
<http://www.opengroup.org/projects/soa/>: An effort being formulated by
Open Group's SOA Working Group to map out definitions, analyses,
recommendations, reference models, and standards.
OASIS SOA Reference Model
<http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-rm/v1.0/soa-rm.pdf>: An abstract model
for services; a set of guiding principles on what SOA is. Under this
model is a Reference Architecture
<http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-rm/soa-ra/v1.0/soa-ra-pr-01.pdf> (PDF
link) OASIS is developing that serves as a generic blueprint for a class
of items that may be further specialized to meet a specific set of
requirements. Patterns are also guided by the Reference Model.
OMG's SoaML <http://www.omg.org/docs/ad/08-08-04.pdf>: Designed to
support the activities of service modeling and design and to fit into an
overall model-driven development approach. Duane says SoaML provides a
valuable piece of work to the overall SOA set of standards. "One of the
most common questions people ask is 'How do I identify a candidate for a
service?' A model-driven approach (even like OMG's MDA) will help in
this respect.">>
*You can read this at:
*
*http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=1256
*
*Gervas*
