Last May at JavaOne, Oracle and Gartner outlined a vision of something that they called SOA 2.0. They defined SOA 2.0 as a move away from ‘traditional SOA’ and Web Services based on a client-server model with services being treated as external methods called by clients. Oracle proposed something more general based on asynchronous events being triggered by alerts and event notifications.
The reaction was that many people felt that appending 2.0 to SOA was a marketing ploy from Oracle. The first generation of SOA was still being sorted out and some middleware vendors, like webMethods and TIBCO had already offered capabilities similar to what Oracle was proposing. To object to the Oracle moniker, many people signed an anti-SOA 2.0 petition.
But no matter what you call it, SOA has been and is evolving. Web 2.0 is currently making a strong mark on it. Dion Hinchcliff made a list of Emerging Ideas for SOA Architects in 2007, many of them influenced by what’s happening in Web 2.0. For enterprise applications involving sensitive data, some of these ideas may not fly, but for other applications, the ideas can make sense. The list includes:
- Make Services Consumable by the Browser. Easier to use web glue protocols like REST and JSON can lead to wider adoption and implementation than more complex SOAP-based implementations.
- Consider publishing services that are based on RSS or ATOM. Content syndication is easy and the services are equally easy to consume.
- Expose content via URI addresses. Content representable by a URI allows for much easier consumption and reuse. URI information is crawlable and searchable.
- Consider adding metering to your service. Track who is using (and abusing) your service. It also allows for avenues of possible monetization.
- Consider JSON as a service option. Compared to XML payloads, JSON is very fast and compact.
- Consider putting a widget face on your service, making it easy to add your services to web pages.
- Leverage Global SOA. Take advantage of data services available on the web.
[...] Oracle proposed a vision of next-generation SOA called SOA 2.0 based on asynchronous events being triggered by alerts and event notifications.? While the Oracle marketing machine faltered with that vision, the idea an SOA architecture with ’smarter’ events may not be too far off the mark as the next direction of SOA. [...]