Leveraging Information and Intelligence

In the world of SOA there are two types of services:  Transactional services that deal with behavior, or what a service will do.   Also, data services that deal with the data, or what information the service will produce and consume.      The fact of the matter is that there are no pure data services and no pure transactional services, your services fall somewhere in the middle.      Thus, you have services that are more like data services, and services that are more like transactional services, and how you design those services is an art unto itself.  

The trouble comes in when considering that most of those designing, building, and deploying services focus on transactional services,  and data service have a tendency to become second class citizens when considering an SOA.    Typically SOA architects and developers like to focus on the services...well...as services, and the data is an afterthought.  The data is simply linked in, but not integrated into the service.   

Thus, poorly defined and designed services, leads to a poorly defined and designed SOA.   SOA will indeed be dead, but just within your architecture.   Don't be that guy.

The only way to counter this problem is to become aware that SOA is about behavior and data, as defined within sets of services.   Thus, the service design must be considered with data as a systemic component.    You're defining your data or data abstractions from the physical database, binding the refined structure into the service, and then placing the logic and behavior around the data.   The result is a better designed and more reusable service.   Doing this over and over again means a better designed SOA, leveraging services that make full use of the underlying data.

A bit of a helpful hint to consider over the weekend.