June 2007 Archives

Sandra Gittlen, writing in Datamation, explored "three ways to avoid SOA snafus.* Here are the three biggest snafus and how to address them: 1. Operating in a vacuum. SOA is an enterprise project, and should be managed as such. "You... Read More..

Does Business Process Execution Language lack the "human touch"? Some industry leaders say that BPEL is too automation-centric, and lacks support for human interaction with the workflow. However, not everyone agrees on the best way to resolve the matter. Process... Read More..

Anyone listening to or reading many of the vendor statements and pundit analysis these days can be forgiven if they think that SOA is pervasive across all organizations large and small. However, most complete SOA efforts are still few and... Read More..

Web services may offer the path of least resistance to SOA, but theoretically, are not essential to SOA. SOA is now being employed for the monitoring controls for Europe's largest particle accelerator, but employing Java-based technologies versus Web services. And... Read More..

One point I and many other analysts in the ebizQ blogosphere proclaim with great persistence is that SOA and business process management are made for each other. (I just said as much last week, here.) A service-oriented architecture provides the... Read More..

SOA approaches and offerings are increasingly incorporating “event-driven architecture,” in which processes are launched or redirected in response to specific cues from applications. One of the most compelling enablers of real-time enterprise is radio frequency identification (RFID), which can provide... Read More..

Nick Malik recently published, in one spot, the four fundamental concepts of SOA. Nick observes that these four concepts are tightly interrelated, though they might not seem like it when reviewed one by one: Enterprise Canonical Data Model - The... Read More..

If enterprise architects act as the "city planners," who worry about the way neighborhoods are developed, and how people and commerce can flow most effectively, then what is the role of SOA architects? Should they function as the service providers,... Read More..

At Wednesday's BI in Action virtual conference, I will be joining the Beth Gold-Bernstein, along with the folks from Business Objects and Savvion, in a panel discussion on the relationship between Business Intelligence, Business Process Management, and SOA. (Link and... Read More..

We hear a lot about SOA governance in the context of policy enforcement and change management. But, ultimately, none of this will mean a thing if there isn't a meeting of the minds. That's what will make or break an... Read More..

Some industry observers have equated service-enabling formerly proprietary legacy applications to "putting lipstick on a pig," and this serves, at best, as a temporary solution until a full-fledged SOA environment is put into place. I think some legacy systems, such... Read More..

"The learning curve is steep. It is not so much any given aspect which is difficult to learn, it is rather the sheer number of technologies and tools one must be familiar with to execute the complete project." Early last... Read More..

Experts with leading vendors of course, are optimistic about adoption of SOA, but in a recent series of podcasts, they candidly pointed out that many of their customers are only on the first leg of their journey to SOA. ebizQ... Read More..