SOA++

Thanks to James for pointing me at the "Stop the SOA 2.0 petition".

I can't helpbut be perplexed by the outrage surrounding "SOA 2.0".

As Sandy Kemsley points out, this whole thing seems to have been driven by Gartner (and Oracle, who are touting their Fusion middleware). I agree that using the "SOA 2.0" moniker is silly and potentially dangerous; it freaks out the thoughtful client and gives the incorrect impression to everyone else that the SOA bandwagon is utterly out of control.

However, we should not lose the key insight that Oracle and Gartner have brought to the table: SOA is not just "CORBA 2.0"; it is also an event-driven thought. A lot of the marketing slides out there could easily lead you to believe that SOA is a new name for DCE. Not so... and Gartner/Oracle have done us all a service by getting some attention for this often-overlooked side of the equation.

However, IBM's SOA reference architecture has always made it clear that an event bus is critical to SOA (if I'm not mistaken, WebSphere ESB was even announced at the same time as IBM's big SOA launch last year). If I had only just realised the importance of events, the last thing I'd be doing would be drawing attention to myself by implying my "SOA 1.0" thoughts were missing 50% of the necessary functionality.

[2006-06-06 23:55 Minor edit]