--- In [email protected], Nick Gall <nick.g...@...> wrote: > > However "poor" technology leaps are, they are infinitely better than > hand-waving pseudo-architectural leaps like SOA.
I wouldn't state it to such an extreme but SOA is definitely a bit fuzzy. There are still scores of folks that think SOA = WS and ESBs. > For better or worse, it is concrete technologies that move the > human race "forward"; not vague "architectures". REST is to SOA as > the Web is to Hypertext. But REST is not a concrete technology. Fielding's recent posts have objected to equating REST and HTTP. http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/ REST is an architectural style as is SOA. It's just that REST has a concrete *example* to point to. REST does not require the use of HTTP just as being SO does not require the use of WS or an ESB. > Gall's law <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%27s_law> wins > again: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have > evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition > also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch > never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, > beginning with a working simple system." Read "REST" for "simple > system" and "SOA" or "WS-*" for "complex system". I see what you're driving at but I think you're using "complex" when "unspecified" is really the case. SO principles are fairly spartan and simple but open to interpretation. Complexity comes from folks throwing in aspects that have nothing to do with being SO, IMO. That's the source of debates and disagreements--what's included? REST focuses on interaction style. SO principles are mum about interaction--it merely states that consumers and providers interact via an interface defined by the provider. REST has lots to say about that interface. SO has little to say, other than the interface is separate from the implementation. REST is appealing because it specifies a particular interface path. SO is more wide open/flexible/complex/confusing because the particulars of the service interface(s) are unspecified and left as an exercise for the reader. -Rob
