Applied SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture and Design Strategies

CHAPTER 1

Realizing the Promise of SOA

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

– George Santayana

Everyone has heard the many promises and benefits of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), and you’ve all probably heard a dozen different definitions of what SOA is or isn’t. We’re going to take a different approach. We want to paint a picture of what SOA can deliver and the promise of SOA, and then describe the challenges that organizations face in realizing that promise. Together, the vision and the challenges provide a set of requirements that the architecture must meet to make your implementation of SOA successful at delivering the promised benefits. Throughout the book, we’ll describe the detailed architecture, design principles, and techniques that meet those architectural requirements, make the architecture actionable, and deliver results. In this chapter, you look at:

• What did and didn’t work in the past
• The promise of SOA to the enterprise
• The challenges of delivering on that promise
• How to meet the challenge (the subject of this book)

But first, let’s start with a little story. The scenario is true although the names have been changed.

Once Upon a Time ...

Back in 1994, a major U.S. bank was trying to resolve a problem with customer service. Like pretty much every bank at that time, all of the different products (i.e., different types of accounts) were implemented on different mainframe systems. When you telephoned the customer service representative, ...