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Sometimes it feels like this industry resembles the old game of “whack a mole” just when you have whacked the last one, another pops up. The SOA community has recently risen up against the horrible term SOA 2.0 and I remain hopeful that this term will disappear as quickly as it appeared. Now another “threat” is bubbling under: The strange view (to me at least) that Web2.0 is in some way incompatible or even competing with SOA.

Steve Jones has written recently about this latest phony war in an excellent blog item. I guess in some ways it was inevitable: Both Web2.0 and SOA suffer from multiple interpretations and when combined with the blogsphere's love of a good row, it was just too easy to set up an “either-or” discussion.

SOA has also been suffering from an on-going naming and scoping discussion to confuse matters further - although I believe the smoke is clearing from the battle-field as we seem to finally agreed that SOA is not simply Web Services or an ESB and equally that SOA can use ESBs without being tainted and that while we may or may not like the term SOA that is what we are stuck with.

With regard to the SOA versus Web2.0 debate in particular, there has been unhelpful throwing around of what are intended as positive or negative terms depending on your side of the argument: 'lightweight' when discussing Web2.0 or 'enterprisy' when discussing SOA (a debate well covered by Joe McKendrik here and here ). This is dangerous as it leads to the mistaken view that the enterprise and all of its integration problems can be solved by either only the heaviest grade middleware or by only the most fluid Web2.0 style approaches. This can only be a plausible view to some software vendors who believe that their product can solve all known ailments or technology purists who believe their chosen technology can really make the world this simple! Instead as Steve Jones points out, there is a role and requirement for many different technologies and approaches: horses for courses -

One size doesn't fit all, and taking an architectural and particularly a business view of SOA helps you pick the right delivery approach for each service rather than trying to shoe-horn one method onto everything.

Web2.0 is of course more than just a set of technologies - it can also be considered to be a set of business models, and a philosophical approach to developing software around participation and easy access and these are certainly challenging to the attitudes often entrenched in the enterprise.

This is the interesting discussion to be had: how the Web 2.0 technologies, philosophy and even business models can be used in the context of the Service Oriented Architecture. And it is going on in many places for instance here – but somehow, perhaps, it is all less interesting than a good fight.

Posted by rbradley in Market trends • SOA concepts • Web2.0 |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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