RE: [soa-blueprints] Anti-Blueprints - Number of services

[Davies Marc <Marc.Davies@uk.fujitsu.com>]

Ah, but the point of SOA in a business context is the architectural control
and standardisation.

I agree that the Internet is service oriented [anarchy ;o)] - absolutely
cannot disagree with your inferences. However, *does* it (not '*can* it')
deliver a quantifiable methodology for understanding the cost of delivering
a service and controlling the initiation, production and disposition of
services to deliver reduced complexity? No I don't think it does.

I think the Internet is a perfect example of 'pure-play' SOA, conceptual but
in no waya model that could be delivered (although it could be synthesused)
into an Enterprise - in the same way that the Open Source concept (as
epitomised by sourceforge) 'can' deliver fantastic solutions [frequently]
driven by 1st class development methodologies - 'doesn't' deliver a solution
that an Enterprise could safely adopt in and of itself, as the business
drivers conflict.

Now, I accept that from a purist viewpoint we might say that it doesn't
matter about the higher level abstraction epitomised by the business focus
(and I have no idea of the v10 framework from RM BTW, I'm still trying to
find time to properly assess v09.so it may be there), however - one of the
critical reasons for global interest in SOA is the belief (outside of
technical circles) that there might finally be an architectural prinicplke
not so firmly bound in technical terms, that the divide between business and
IT could be overcome.

In terms of Blueprinting - are we are looking for 'how-to'? - as the RM TC
has demonstrated, its easy to get caught up in the circular debate (after
all, only a few weeks ago on that TC the debate "what is a service" was
still raging away). I would assert that we need to be pragmatic and
business-oriented ourselves while trying to deliver into this TC.

In a nutshell - do I think the number of services plays a part in the
pattern/anti-pattern debate? Yes I do, because this is not a debate about
service orientation in its purest sense - it's a debate about what is 'good
practice' versus 'bad practice' when assessing the fates of our customers
(internal/external) and attempting to deliver an architecture that reduces
cost/complexity, not increases it. Put another way, if the RM TC is where
the Pure Mathematicians reside, then is not Blueprint TC where the Applied
Math is carried out?

Best,
Marc.
<ducks after typing.., :o) >


-----Original Message-----
From: Duane Nickull [mailto:dnickull@adobe.com] 
Sent: 01 November 2005 15:25
To: Davies Marc; Miko Matsumura; Jones, Steve G; Beack, Theo; Ken Laskey
Cc: soa-blueprints@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [soa-blueprints] Anti-Blueprints - Number of services


<post>
-----Original Message-----
From: Davies Marc [mailto:Marc.Davies@uk.fujitsu.com] 

I think Duane's example of the Internet perfectly underscores this
principle
- inasmuch as the Internet is a collection of millions of services - it
is
(IMHO) *not* an SOA - unless we're talking Service Oriented Anarchy :-)

... it doesn't conform to architectural disciplines, anyone can code how
they want, anyone can deploy what they want, there are no checks to
ensure
services deliver on their promised capability (I could go on). Sure, its
an
excellent example of how millions of services can be operating - but,
its
also an illustration of how millions can end up delivering very poor
service, to analogise - if you google the 'wrong' search string - you
end up
with 1 million 'hits' = meaningless.
</post>
Marc:

Hmm - I strongly disagree with this assertion.  The internet has the
same patterns as web services.  Request-response is the primary
mechanism, returning either a success state or a possible error code.
It is message oriented and event driven.  Each service may have specific
policies, metadata (<meta> tags along with the search engines synopsis),
a contract for use (in most cases it is freely available to everyone who
asks) and there are multiple mechanisms for advertising the availability
of services.

One of the core tenets of interface based design is that anyone can
implement whatever they want behind the service interface.  It is not
limited to just coding either - you could deploy chimpanzees with
abacuses who then serialize a response back into html.  The point is
that the interface hides the implementation and insulates the consumer
from those details.  This is another of the core tenets of SOA.

Your claim that the internet delivers poor services is also
unquantifiable.  From a pragmatic architectural standpoint, the value of
the content is moot.  It is the architecture that is SOA, not the
usefulness of the content.

Google roughly equates to the concept of the advertising/discovery
mechanism in the SOA Reference Model.  Yes - getting hundreds or
thousands of results is sub-optimal, however the patterns are the same.

The internet is the single largest SOA on the planet.

Duane