In a new post here at the ebizQ community, Ronan Bradley looked at the ongoing SOA-Web Oriented Architecture discussion, and notes that he got "an awful feeling of déjà vu on a number of fronts."
First, he says, SOA is an architecture, not an implementation standard, such as WS-* or REST. Second, many enterprise problems are complex, and aren't necessarily easily fixed by simple, lightweight solutions. Third, enterprise architectures don't change overnight -- they evolve gradually. Don't expect anyone to throw away their legacy systems (or SOA for that matter) and rush to WOA approaches anytime soon, he says.
Ronan's déjà vu may stem from the "fads" that seem to sweep the IT industry on a regular basis. WOA definitely has a lot of "faddishness" about it -- in a few years, the enterprise benefits will be more firmly established, just as it's happening with SOA now. Don't throw away that legacy system just yet.
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SOA vs. WOA: "Don't throw away that legacy system just yet." My god man, are you digressing twenty-years into the past. Some of the biggest "snafus" in healthcare are the crippling legacy systems and their insidious silos of mission critical information.
If you think WOA to be faddish, then you will probably consider my development of the surrogate platform DOA (Diagnostic Oriented Architecture) utterly futile. If healthcare information systems cannot pull themselves together for a unified view, then try getting your cholesterol level from 10 years ago.