Talk:SOA

Web Services do not a Service Oriented Architecture make I'm afraid, although they are a step in the right direction. See SOA Implementation Roadmap Poster here for a nice graphic illustration (downloadable PDF if you register) of what a full-blown SOA adoption strategy might involve.

I think Webservices are central to modern service oriented architectures. Feel free to describe your view? --Jka 09:26, 9 November 2007 (CET)

I agree, but web services are just the first step on a much longer road. ATM VDF has the tools to build basic web services, but does not have the capability to build SOA implementations, and indeed needs significant effort even to fit into such as a component, because (just for instance) we have, to date, only the most rudimentary control over SOAP:Headers, so that complying with such things as WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Security, etc. (which are themselves still somewhat in flux) is, as yet, far from "out of the box". On the ZapThink SOA roadmap I point to above, VDF only just gets to first-base: Point-to-Point integration. I couldn't be more enthusiastic about us doing better in future (and if I get the chance I will be helping in that), but I think it is important to realise that web services have a "useful today" utility that has only a limited amount to do with SOA. B2B integration, internal integration, utility services and the like can all be worthwhile without committing to a full SOA approach. My view is that our "main topic" here should be web services, with SOA and related subjects being sub-topics off that.

On that front, I am basically arrogantly deciding that I'm the local expert (or at least one of them) on this subject area and am trying to expand and organise what we have here on it. It is going to take me a little time I'm afraid - turns out I have a day-job as well! :-(