SOA Architectural Patterns

[Danny Thornton <danny_thornton2@yahoo.com>]

One of the action items from the face-to-face meetings
was to provide a write-up about architectural
patterns.   This week I will provide a patterns
mapping to the architectural elements defined in our
face-to-face meeting.  A short summary of my view on
SOA architectural patterns follows.  The summary is
nothing new, but the relationship between the SOA RA
architecture and existing patterns will be.

When developing architecture for a computing system, a
good question to ask is if patterns exist that relate
to the particular computing system being developed. 
Well-devised patterns provide lessons learned and
guidance in avoiding common pitfalls that are likely
to occur without a certain level of experience. 
Computing system patterns derive from observational
and statistical data and go in the direction from the
concrete to the abstract and from the abstract to more
abstraction. Patterns provide a level of validation
for the architectural elements of a computing system. 
There can be lattices and hierarchies of patterns and
the same pattern can be applicable in many places in
the lattice and the hierarchy.   Since SOA is a
rapidly maturing field in the industry, SOA patterns
will emerge that will help guide the development of
Enterprise SOAs.   

Do we have enough information about working SOAs to
devise SOA architectural patterns for the RA?  I think
we do, we can debate this in the coming weeks.

Danny

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