RE: [xml-dev] When Is Something Really SOA?

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@intergraph.com>]

Round One:

 

SOA is an enabler of an enterprise architecture.   An enterprise can be specified using services, and in fact,

is a service space.   Service data models are terms or vectors of the enterprise.    What distinguishes the enterprise is

that it will have a high similarity metric in types of information exchanged as a result of using the services

that it advertises or makes available for discovery.   Enterprises are aggregations of services by the data

models supported (although, this is by definition, an information architecture and not a fact of physical

products delivered).

 

As a result of the data models, the service space exhibits local similarities that roughly approximate the

enterprise boundaries.  Distance or angle measurements among these (terms shared by

synonymy and polysemy) reveal that services cluster and that this cluster is the 

rough and dynamic enterprise space boundary .   Essentially, an enterprise is a cluster of service terms within

the enterprise term.  Enterprises are a higher level space of enterprise terms, and the aggregation of all

discoverable terms constitutes the network space or information space of resources as defined by the

World Wide Web architecture.

 

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Chiusano Joseph [mailto:chiusano_joseph@bah.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 3:25 PM
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: [xml-dev] When Is Something Really SOA?

Here is a question has been on my mind for quite some time - I have some strong viewpoints on it, but would like to hear other viewpoints.

 

The general question is: When is something really a service-oriented architecture (SOA)?

 

By this I do not mean "what is an SOA", "what characteristics does an SOA have", etc. Rather, there seems to be a range of points on a continuum (call it the "service continuum", perhaps) at which someone may declare that they have implemented a service-oriented architecture.

 

In the past, I have pondered the following more specific question (please note that this is all scoped to Web Services-based SOA for ease of explanation):

 

If I have 2 Web Services that communicate, do I have an SOA? 

 

We can say "certainly not!". One can do point-to-point integration with Web Services just as easily (to a certain degree) as without, with redundant Web Services rather than shared Web Services (a violation of one of the foundational tenets of SOA, which is shared services).

 

Now let's add some more characteristics:

 

- The 2 Web Services share another Web Service in common for their processing (i.e. we now have a "shared services" scenario)

- The service provider one or more policies for a service consumer that interacts with it (these policies may address security, QoS, etc.)

- There is an electronic contract for interaction with the service provider (e.g. WSDL)

 

Add to this the fact that many (correctly, IMO) consider SOA to be a form of Enterprise Architecture, which (at least in my mind) implies enterprise-level benefits.

 

So the more specific question is:

 

Given the second scenario above (with the various added characteristics) and the fact that many consider SOA to be a form of EA ---

 

Is this second scenario large-scale enough that it *really* may be considered SOA? IOW, how large-scale does such an implementation need to be to *truly* be considered service-oriented architecture? When does one arrive at that point?

 

Joe

 

Joseph Chiusano

Booz Allen Hamilton

Visit us online@ http://www.boozallen.com