Dion Hinchliffe: Eleven Emerging Ideas for SOA Architects in 2007

Posted by Stefan Tilkov on Jan 23, 2007 04:26 PM

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Well-known blogger and Web 2.0 proponent Dion Hinchliffe has put together a list of 11 "emerging ideas" for SOA architects in 2007. Dion believes there is a severe disconnect between the needs of quickly delivering applications on time on the one hand, and the goal of carefully designing valuable and reusable services on the other hand, and highlights the influences  Web 2.0 technologies can have on SOA. In Dion's own words:

Steeped in formal standards, byzantine product stacks, and software engineering principles, these are strange ideas for SOA architects to accept, much less embrace. Then there is the matter of usefully applying these ideas to create a effective service-oriented architecture that can be easily consumed by internal and external customers, and indeed, is preferred to use instead of reinventing the wheel. For the truth is, if the services most of us are building now were so much better than letting development projects just build it themselves, they would be beating a path to the nearest internal SOA representative to save themselves the cost and time. And while that is happening in some cases, SOA adoption studies and anecdotal evidence tells us it's just not happening enough.

He then proposes eleven ideas SOA architects should be considering for 2007:

1. Making services consumable in the browser.
2. Considering syndication over "service-izing."
3. Deeply embracing URI addressability.
4. Using Ajax as the face of your SOA.
5. Monetizing Your SOA.
   
6. Enable users as service consumers.
7. Virtualization, fast scaling, and on-demand architectures.
8. Offering an SOA as visual services via widgets.
9. Considering JSON as a service option.
10. Encouraging and discovering emergent solutions.
11. Leveraging the Global SOA.

These ideas are described in more detail in Dion's original blog post.

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   Web 2.0 meets SOA - AJAX UI for SOA

   Jan 24, 2007 1:58 AM by Jack van Hoof

   How exactly do you implement such ideas? As an illustration I wrote a 5-steps architectuctural approach using well-known and mature components to glue AJAX (Web 2.0) to SOA (Enterprise Architecture). The article can be found here: http://soa-eda.blogspot.com/2007/01/web-20-meets-soa-ajax-ui-for-soa.html With this - simplified - architectural description of adding a typical web 2.0 user interface to an SOA, I tried to demonstrate the convergence of emerging web technologies and emerging trends in Enterprise Architecture. I made use of components like ESB, Portal, B2B gateway, which are currently available on the market. I also made use of standards like JSR168 and WSRP, which are mature and implemented in products available today. I made use of a known programming paradigm - AJAX - to synchronize between the browser and the web server in real-time. AJAX-support is currently implemented in modern browsers and portal servers. I've positioned the architecture in the context of emerging business models like B2B, SaaS and ASP. I illustrated a globally distributed application deployment with a user experience of the application running on his local device. Standards, products and business models will further mature. New standards, technologies and products will emerge and will encourage application services business models at a global level. I think there is no way back from the convergence of internet technologies and Enterprise Architecture. I think SaaS will have a big future making global scale profits out of these evolvements. And I think it will go faster than many realize. Jack van Hoof

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   Building on Dion's ideas today

   Jan 26, 2007 4:57 AM by Randolph Kahle

   I was impressed with Dion's list of emerging ideas for 2007 and quickly realized that these can be implemented today with 1060 NetKernel. To illustrate this I posted an article describing how each of Dion's points can be implemented at http://www.1060.org/blogxter/entry?publicid=80D8BDC43441FBA6165F11DE48ADE7C8 -- Randy Kahle

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   Re: Building on Dion's ideas today

   Feb 12, 2007 10:11 AM by Raphael Cohn

   At the company I'm at, we're already 1, 4, 5 and 6! We've developed our services so that they can be consumed in Excel. Why? Because it's the UI of choice for finance users. We've started not using AJAX, but it's near cousin, Flex, as the UI because we can get up and running ASAP. By using our internal customers as our service consumers, we've been able to deliver far more useful services that address real business need. By letting them use them in Excel, we've been able to reine them to that which is actually useful...

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