A selection of SOA chat: On REST vs Web Services, Cape Clear selling their ESB to ... the ESB, and the surprising appearance of SOA 2.0 - Ronan Bradley's Roads to SOA

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May 25, 2006
A selection of SOA chat: On REST vs Web Services, Cape Clear selling their ESB to ... the ESB, and the surprising appearance of SOA 2.0

Rather than focus on a single issue this time, I thought I would comment on a few articles and blogs that have interested me over the last week.

First up is the latest round of one of the longest standing debates in the SOA world, which is better: REST or SOAP based web services. It seems to be bubbling up again as I mentioned in my comments on Tim Bray’s interview about SOA. Meanwhile Microsoft blogger Savas Parastatidis spotted another proponent of REST and waded into the debate, slamming the authors of a pro-REST, anti-WS article with

I can't believe someone can write so many inaccuracies in a single article. I blame the use of the term 'REST' which today is a buzzword rather than the name of a set of architectural principles which do not relate to a specific technology

Filling the buzzword induced vacuum, I will refer back to David Linthicum succinct description of what precisely REST is about.

Moving on... Congratulations to Cape Clear on their announcement that their ESB is now going to be used by Ireland’s mysteriously named Transmission System Operator. What most people won’t realize is that Ireland’s Transmission System Operator is actually called ESB Networks (as in Electricity Supply Board, not Enterprise Service Bus). I was disappointed that Cape Clear missed the opportunity in the press release headline to tell the world that their ESB was going to be used by Ireland’s ESB.

Moving on ... The term SOA 2.0 seems to be bouncing around this week and last. For instance in this article and Mark Little of JBoss stepped up to the mark and savaged the term SOA2.0 with

Then WHAM! Along comes SOA 2.0! How? Why? WTF?! I also expected more of Oracle on this one! Giving an architectural approach a version number is crazy: it makes no sense at all!

I have got agree with Mark’s sentiments. A term coined by Oracle and Gartner, SOA 2.0 seems to mean a Service Oriented Architecture combined with an Event Driven Architecture. At the end of the day the combination of Services and events happens in just about every SOA and I am not sure we really need another name, let alone a version number increment. I can only assume that SOA 3.0 is on the way, and must surely be the combination of SOA, EDA and Web2.0.

For anybody who wants to read more about the connection between the two, Brenda Michelson, the latest ebizq blogging recruit, has written extensively on the subject in her Patricia Seybold Group blog.

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Comments

Hey Ronan - thanks for sending folks my way! I saw the flurry of SOA 2.0 articles and had to restrain myself from commenting. I feared flames emanating from my keyboard!

I was at the Global Integration Summit yesterday in Boston and had the chance to catch Annie Shum's presentation. She commented that since SOA 2.0 is SOA 10 in binary, we should just call it SOA 10, get the acronymn nonsense (my word) over with, and the real work -- delivering business value -- underway. Of course, she said it much better than my recounting.

-brenda

Posted by: brenda michelson at May 25, 2006 08:46 PM