Re: [soa-rm] When Is An SOA Really An SOA?

[John Harby <jharby@gmail.com>]

This seem to be an issue for defining "Reference Model". Does this
reference model provide a litmus test for architectures to determine
whether or not they follow SOA?

On 5/5/05, Chiusano Joseph <chiusano_joseph@bah.com> wrote:
> This question has been on my mind for quite some time, and I would like now
> to put it in the context of our in-process RM.
>  
> In the past, I have pondered the following more specific question (please
> note that this is all scoped to Web Services-based SOA for ease of
> explanation): 
>  
> If I have 2 Web Services that communicate, do I have an SOA? 
>  
> We can say "certainly not!". One can do point-to-point integration with Web
> Services just as easily (to a certain degree) as without, with redundant Web
> Services rather than shared Web Services (a violation of one of the
> foundational tenets of SOA, which is shared services).
>  
> Now let's say that we have 2 Web Services that each conform to the SOA
> Architectural Model in Figure 1 of our most recent draft. There is a data
> model, a policy, a contract, etc.
>  
> Add to that our definition of SOA on line 470, in which we (correctly) state
> that SOA is a form of Enterprise Architecture, which (at least in my mind)
> implies enterprise-level benefits.
>  
> Q: Given the last scenario above (2 Web Services that each conform to the
> SOA Architectural Model ) and our definition of SOA: Is this scenario
> large-scale enough that it *really* meets our definition? IOW, how
> large-scale does an "instance" that conforms to our RM have to be to yield
> benefits on an enterprise scale? Do we need to stipulate something regarding
> this for our RM?
>  
> Joe
>  
> 
> 
> Joseph Chiusano
> 
> Booz Allen Hamilton
> 
> Visit us online@ http://www.boozallen.com
>  
>