SOA 2.0 : Why a Revision is Really Necessary

SOA 2.0 : Why a Revision is Really Necessary

I guess I'm a little late to the debate about "Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0". However, after going through the arguments, I will have go squarely against the petitioners. The petitioners would have everyone believe that Service Oriented Architecture SOA is a well defined idea that has worked wonders in practice. On the contrary, SOA Service Oriented Architecture is a term as nebulous as ever, and one in seven SOA endeavors end up in failure. The ideas and concepts behind Service Oriented Architecture SOA are just like its WS-NonexistentStandards underpinnings. That is it is careening towards a massive pileup. Joe Mckendrick has a good summary of the current dismal state:

But, if SOA Service Oriented Architecture really is so abstract and elusive, what else is there? What's the alternative? Enterprise computing requires a very deliberate methodology of planning that extends out for years and numerous budget cycles. For companies saddled with patchwork portfolios of various vendors' incompatible legacy systems — combined with home-grown systems — service-oriented architecture and Web services offer a path of least resistance.

Reality is, the industry desperately needs an alternative, that is a revision of the original Service Oriented Architecture SOA concepts.

So that we can at least frame the argument, let's try to figure out exactly what Service Oriented Architecture SOA means. From there, we can propose a reformulation, something that goes beyond the simplistic Oracle/Gartner definition. The Oracle/Gartner leads much to desired in that it simply augments that original SOA with Event Driven Architecture (EDA). Now, every vendor has the right to hijack a term to hype up their existing product line. This tactic was practiced extensively for Service Oriented Architecture SOA 1.0, so I don't expect them giving up on that tactic for Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0.