6 - Web Services and SOA - they are not the same
During my discussions with many of the people working on web services implementations I have noticed one common mistake – the thinking that SOA is simply implementing web services. One cannot achieve “service” (as defined in SOA) by simply wrapping and exposing methods and functions via web services. All web services enabled applications are not “service” from SOA perspective (please read my earlier blog that discusses business service from SOA point of view). This is very dangerous mistake in that it can cost the organization lots of money and never get to the vision of SOA. We need to separate the two and understand the boundaries in order to achieve the promise of SOA.
SOA is about achieving agile business through services that are designed with certain principles in mind (SOA based service design principles and patterns is a separate subject I would like to discuss in the future). It is about empowering the business with the ability to respond quickly and efficiently to change in business requirements and to leverage change for competitive advantage. Thus, at the heart of SOA are services designed for business flexibility.
Web Service is about establishing a standard connectivity – addresses how the services are accessed and consumed. Though there are many other technologies for use in SOA-based service access and connectivity, Web service is the preferred technology. This is because it is standard based, simple to implement and there is huge investment in this technology by platform and tool vendors.
The bottom line is to separate SOA and Web Services right from the start. There is no commonality between the two from the fact that you can have SOA without Web Services. However, using Web Services in SOA implementations is a powerful approach that gives you both business flexibility and standard connectivity.
SOA is about achieving agile business through services that are designed with certain principles in mind (SOA based service design principles and patterns is a separate subject I would like to discuss in the future). It is about empowering the business with the ability to respond quickly and efficiently to change in business requirements and to leverage change for competitive advantage. Thus, at the heart of SOA are services designed for business flexibility.
Web Service is about establishing a standard connectivity – addresses how the services are accessed and consumed. Though there are many other technologies for use in SOA-based service access and connectivity, Web service is the preferred technology. This is because it is standard based, simple to implement and there is huge investment in this technology by platform and tool vendors.
The bottom line is to separate SOA and Web Services right from the start. There is no commonality between the two from the fact that you can have SOA without Web Services. However, using Web Services in SOA implementations is a powerful approach that gives you both business flexibility and standard connectivity.
posted by Awel at
9:16 PM
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