May 10th, 2006
What's wrong with SOA being 'enterprisey'?
A new word has entered our lexicon: ‘enterprisey,’ which is being applied to SOA. Is this a word with positive or negative connotations? (Wikipedia defines it as a "derogatory" term.)
Tim Bray (Sun) agrees that being enterprisey is not a good thing, and recently made the charge that SOA/WS-splat is too "enterprisey," and a shift was taking place to the far simpler REST model.
Anne Thomas Manes (Burton Group), however, begs to differ. Recently, she spoke out against criticism of SOA and the WS-splat stack as being "enterprisey" with this retort:
"WS-* is entreprisey. But is that really such a bad thing? If you need comprehensive enterprise-class semantics (security, reliability, session management, transactions, etc), then it really helps to use an enterprisey middleware system."
While Manes acknowledges that with 60+ specs out there, WS-* can be complex to fathom, but toolkits should eventually handle most of that complexity. (Microsoft Indigo/WCF is one.) "Developers should really only need to be concerned with a handful of the specs: SOAP, WSDL, and XML Schema–maybe WS-MetadataExchange. Everything else should be handled transparently by the toolkits," she said.
Manes says WS-* is the best approach where robust middleware is required, but also adds that she doesn’t recommend using WS-* for all service interactions, especially mass consumer-oriented services. "If an application doesn’t require enterprisey infrastructure semantics, then it’s much more appropriate to use a simpler middleware system, such as plain old XML (POX) over HTTP."
I concur that ‘enterprisey’ should not be a "derogatory" word. The very term ‘enterprise’ suggests a talent for marshalling people, resources and systems to provide products and services that the market demands. SOA promises to greatly streamline that capability.
Joe McKendrick is an author and consultant with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in the technology industry. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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