I thought that Eric Knorr did a great job in herding the cats towards the "The SOA lifecycle" article in this week’s InfoWorld. I was a contributor to this special report, and really loved the end result. Best SOA article that's been published in a long while, finally getting to the meat of the matter. Boy, do we need this.

Trying to write an article about building a SOA is like writing an article about how to get a man to Mars. First, you have to listen to everyone's opinion as to how it's done, and then figure out the best path and technology to deploy, and then the process of building the vehicle. However, at the end of the day your ass is on that rocket so you better have built the thing correctly. Those of you tasked with building SOAs know exactly what I'm talking about.

I did put some lines in the sand as to what a service should be, again based on me listening to many opinions on the topic, and man-o-man are there many. Here's my take:

"First and foremost, services must be designed for reuse."

"Services must also be designed for heterogeneity."

"Another basic concept is abstraction, which is the concealment of protocols, data access layers, and even security mechanisms that play no role in what the service offers to the outside world."

"Finally, services need to be designed based on standards."

That’s my story and I'm sticking to it.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on May 11, 2006 08:36 AM