Johannesburg, 31 Jul 2008
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is being hailed in some quarters as a panacea for all software problems. This contention should be met with a healthy dose of scepticism. While SOA offers very real business benefits, prospective buyers would be well advised to ensure they understand clearly what these are and how they can be achieved. Let's debunk some of the myths surrounding SOA.
Myth No 1:
"SOA is easy." This is pure hyperbole. While SOA concepts are reasonably simple to understand and apply, building a SOA-rich environment is an involved and evolutionary process that requires constant customer interaction.
Myth No 2:
"SOA is a panacea." Bunkum! While SOA architecture forms the kernel of the solution, business process expertise and applications expertise are equally vital if it is to work. In order to realise the full benefits, SOA principles must be applied at each layer of the solution.
Myth No 3:
"SOA is an off-the-shelf solution." This can in theory apply to "technology-neutral" solutions that are designed to have a high degree of reusability. The scenario changes when we're looking at technology-specific solutions which all require a degree of customisation. This is determined by the customer's existing environment and legacy applications. That said, an SOA solution should be looking to achieve the highest rate of reusability possible, and good implementations should see this increase over time.
Myth No 4:
"SOA is not aligned to any standards." In truth, SOA is based on several well established industry standards, including those developed by the OASIS working group and the various Web services standards bodies.
Myth No 5:
"SOA is expensive." Well how long is a piece of string? The cost of an SOA solution is directly related to its sophistication, the level of the automation required and the applications and products that are deployed. Careful planning and foresight can result in an effective, feature-rich solution that won't break the bank. It also aims to reduce costs over the long term
Myth No 6:
"SOA = Web services." A common misconception. SOA is a technology-neutral architecture. When selecting the technology to be used for a solution, implementers should consider actual business requirements, performance, reliability and, of course, budget. A solution built using Web services is not a de facto SOA solution unless it meets three important criteria: interaction between service providers and customers, incorporates service contracts and uses metadata.
Myth No 7:
"SOA = EAI". This is a common misconception, but the fact is that SOA is far more sophisticated than enterprise application integration (EAI). While EAI integrates applications through middleware using adapters, which provide access to the underlying applications, SOA entails integration that is based on services rather than application programming interfaces. Importantly, unlike EAI, SOA supports transformations and mappings. Simply put, SOA offers a superior architectural methodology, which ensures better performance, flexibility, usability and total cost of ownership of the solution.
Remember, SOA is an architectural approach used to build solutions that contain a set of services, service consumers, service producers and service contracts. The solutions will not be successful unless existing business processes are taken into account by savvy implementers who have not been taken in by vendor hype.
Hopefully by debunking some of the myths surrounding SOA, we've gone some way in putting it in its proper perspective and potential implementers will have a clear understanding of the very real benefits it offers.
Share