When
· Naughties
· · 2006
· · · April
· · · · 17 (3 entries)
The End of SOA · I did an interview and a podcast [Update: here] at that Rails conference and the question came up in both, and in the hallway talk too: “What do you think we should do about SOA?” Which weirdly, nobody had asked me before, and I could find only one answer: “Don’t do anything. ‘SOA’ may have meant something once but it’s just vendor bullshit now.” Looking back, what happened was, certain software architects were uncomfortable with the framing that goes with the words “Web Services”; maybe because people think anything with “Web” in the name should be simple and lightweight and easy to set up. Thus SOA, which is so much more Enterprisey. Me, I want to go the other way. The crucial point is that Web-like things should be simple and lightweight and easy to set up; so I think the “Web” part of “Web Services” is more important than the “Services” part. SOA isn’t the future, Web style is.
5✭♫: Take Five · You’ve all heard this, it’s the biggest hit Dave Brubeck’s band ever had, only Dave didn’t write it nor does he play a solo. The tune’s cool enough, you’ll hear it and think “Oh, I know that” but actually you probably don’t, it’s an altogether astounding performance and rewards lots of close listening. (“5✭♫” series introduction here; with an explanation of why the title may look broken.) ...
Important, I Think · I’m genuinely paranoid about banging my own drum and shouting “Listen to me!” because I know how often I’ve been wrong about things, and how much of the future is determined by luck and raw random chance. That said, if the lessons I’ve learned over the years mean anything, there’s a conversation going on right now that’s real important. Here are three starting points: Going Down To The Crossroads from Don Box, Styles: Beyond WS and REST from me, and Spending the $100 from Don. They aren’t the whole conversation, but they reflect it well and have pointers to most of the rest. Right now, a lot of people think that Web-flavored frameworks are the future of heterogeneous-network applications, which is to say almost all applications; and that the WS-mountain is really a WS-molehill; and that we need to fix up the tooling for developers. Depending how much pull Don has, Microsoft might be first off the mark; fair enough. But I really think this deserves attention. In an interesting sidelight, Rob Sayre (in comments here) and Dare Obasanjo have agreed with Sam Ruby that if you’re building an actual application using Web-flavor APIs, well, by golly, you ought to play by the Web-Architecture rules. Glad you guys think so.
