Re: [soa-rm-ra] A general comment on the SOA RA

[James Odell <email@jamesodell.com>]

Am in strong agreement with Boris.  SOA is a business approach as well as it
is a technological approach. The SOA architecture is partitioned into two
parts: business and IT.  This division is one strength of the SOA approach,
because:

·   The business specifies and governs its service needs, rules, and
specifications in its language/artifacts‹enabling the organization to enact
its business processes supported by technology.  Thus, the business can be
thought of as the service consumer.

·   IT provides implemented software and hardware technology that the
business needs‹via reuse or developing anew.  Thus, IT can be thought of as
the service provider.

SOA enables businesses to enact their business processes supported by
technology, instead of business processes determined or constrained by their
IT organizations.  SOA, then, provides a way for business and IT to partner
in a more value-added manner.  This business-focused approach uses
technology that facilitates the growth of the entire enterprise.

While it may be too late to add this kind of content to the SOA RA[F], it
could still be acknowledged up front.  Otherwise, I'm afraid that -- without
it -- the SOA RA may be received with mixed reaction.

-Jim



On 4/3/09 6:53 PM, "Lublinsky, Boris" indited:

> I have finally finished reading and realized where I had the biggest
> issue with this.
> The document equates SOA (for the main part) with a complex distributed
> system, leaving completely aside Business/IT alignment nature of SOA.
> Unless we stipulate from the very beginning, that services are
> representation of well-defined business artifacts, there is no
> difference between SOA and, for example, The Web. I would think that Web
> is even more complex.
> So, in my mind,
> 
> "SOA can be defined as an architectural style promoting the concept of
> business-aligned enterprise service as the fundamental unit of
> designing, building, and composing enterprise business solutions.
> Multiple patterns, defining design, implementations, and deployment of
> the SOA solutions, complete this style."
> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/architecture/library/ar-soastyle/
> 
> Similar definitions can be also find at:
> http://www.opengroup.org/projects/soa/doc.tpl?gdid=10632  and indirectly
> at http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2008_11/column6/index.html
> 
> Please, let me know if this makes sense?
> 
> If it does, then the document lacks a few other things that can be
> easily added. But lets first agree on this slight change of a viewpoint.
> 
> Boris 
> 
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