Service-Oriented Architecture
The post-dotcom IT industry is currently consumed with the notion of service orientation! The goal of many big IT transformation projects is to now move from a technology-centric model to one that provides reusable services. Although this has certain merits, it reminds me of a few years back when business process reengineering (BPR) was all the rage! An important element of BPR was, of course, the adoption of quality standards such as CMM, ISO9000, and so on. Out of every big movement we get useful things as well as some hype!
What we’re now seeing is the migration to service-oriented architecture (SOA), of which Web services is an example. This article explores some of the concepts behind SOA and shows that in spite of the hype, the required concepts are simple and relatively easy to implement. Along the way, you’ll see some concepts related to workflow, data structure choice, and a brief analysis of the latter.