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As new IT concepts emerge, we tend to take words from the ‘real world’ and twist and turn them into technology terms. Unfortunately, SOA is currently a particularly bad offender when it comes to creating as much confusion as clarity with the terminology that is being used (even with term SOA itself). And what better examples than orchestration and choreography – is a business process really best described with reference to an orchestra or a dance?

This lack of clarity means that we seem to spend more and more time explaining what we mean by the terminology we use instead of actually communicating. In case you aren’t convinced, a great example of a basic but still unclear bit of terminology is the term Transformation which is used in hugely different ways by different people – all the way from bit-twiddling data fields to complex processing of the information contained (I tend towards the second).

If we look at the definition of the ‘real’ word “transformation”, it comes from the verb: to transform which has meanings such as To change the form of; to change in shape or appearance; to metamorphose, to transmute. It all sounds close enough except when one comes to actually ask different people what they think is technically involved in transformation and discover that some think it is a simple reordering while others regard it as fundamentally complex and more about semantics than anything else.

Unfortunately I don’t see much alternative to current situation until SOA matures and all of this terminology settles down. In the meantime, we will have to show patience and accept that one man’s transformation is another man’s translation is another man’s something else. (And these thoughts were inspired by yet another discussion I was caught up in which was more about terminology than substance)

Posted by rbradley in SOA concepts |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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