Service Oriented Architecture Field Guide for Executives

Chapter 9. HOW MUCH SOA DO I NEED?

There are some products and substances in this world for which there seem to be endless uses. Duct tape and baking soda fall into this category. What commercial, industrial, or residential malfunctions cannot be fixed with duct tape? Correspondingly, what can you not clean, disinfect, or otherwise improve with baking soda? There are, however, other products and substances that it is important that you handle more judiciously. Dynamite is very useful for mining and excavation, but no one suggests that you double the needed amount of dynamite "just to be sure." Nor would you want to use dynamite for removing every obstacle or blocked passage. Plumbing stopped up? Shove a stick of dynamite down the drain! Similarly, if you need to drive a nail into a plank of wood, then nothing works better than a hammer. If you are trying to remove the lug nuts on a car wheel, however, you will quickly get frustrated if your only tool is a hammer. In fact, when someone attempts to apply a given solution to every conceivable problem, we recite the old saying: "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Service oriented architecture (SOA) is a lot more like dynamite or a hammer than it is like duct tape or baking soda. If you have a system, business process, or line of business that needs what SOA has to offer, such as interoperability, reuse, agility, and in certain cases reduced risk, then you will be very glad that you have the capability to ...