Monday, November 5, 2007

SOA without Technology

In this beautiful article "A Low-Tech Approach to Understanding SOA" Dan North describes a Service-Oriented Architecture in terms of a 1950s corporation, where no computers were available and people worked with just pens, paper and folders.

The idea is to focus attention to the business description level, without mentioning any technology. I think this is a very effective metaphor, which helps shaping the What, Who and Why of a business services architecture without bothering with implementation details.

Forgetting for a while about the technological infrastructure can really improve the quality of description and lead to a cleaner picture of what it is really necessary. SOA is first about People and Process, then Platform (Read this "SOA Methodology" presentation for an example).

There is nothing new under the sun, except that some weird information about SOA has delivered wrong concepts to final customers and it's time for some clarity.

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