Xml Situps

2006-01-24T10:59:00-08:00

Courtesy of Camping, Why’s latest stroke of genius (he’s the creator of Hoodwink.d as well), comes this lovely little graphic.

Ever curious if you are an XML Geek? If that made you laugh, then yes. If you can also understand Sam Ruby’s XMLConf presentation you are a Super XML geek. Congratulations.

The Silliness of SOA

2005-11-10T09:06:00-08:00

There seems to be a lot of buzz around the concept of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), as long as you don’t ask any of its proponents what it actually means. For an example of the ways in which English can be mangled by technical jargon beyond recognition, check out some of the definitions from A Defining Moment for SOA and Revisiting the Definitive SOA Definition to see what I mean. My personal favorite from the bunch is

SOA is a form of technology architecture that adheres to the principles of service orientation. When realized through the Web services technology platform, SOA establishes the potential to support and promote these principles throughout the business process and automation domains of an enterprise.

which really tells me nothing at all about why this is cool and where you would start if your CEO suddenly decided you needed it. Cutting through the bombast and hype, it seems like SOA is basically

Wrapping a backend database or similar resource in a small component for business logic you can talk to with XML.

This is definitely cool for many reasons (loose coupling, security, building big things from small parts), but I don’t understand why there’s so much hype about it now. Not to boast, but we’ve been doing this at Alacra for 8 years now, and I’m really gobsmacked that this sort of architecture would be a revelation to anyone, especially since it builds on design patterns good sense and the older Unix and later Internet philosophy that Small Pieces Loosely Joined can make great things. And SOA is pretty much what the earliest XML-driven web services were.

I can only assume that the latest hype about SOA is less about what the technology is, but what it is not. Hint: add a P and you can see what businesses find so refreshing about SOA. SOAP is a heavyweight protocol that can be good for some external APIs, but is a lot more work than a simple quick and dirty internal application often needs. Imagine being able to drop the requirements of WSDL bindings, XML typing, even limited data structures to get the most lightweight, low-ceremony solutions you can feel comfortable with using. And since it’s internal, you don’t have to worry about the “shame” of not being fully SOAP+WS-whatever compliant for your API. Looking at it this way, no wonder they’re excited. I’d be excited too if I were able to stop documenting and start hacking for change.

Nimble Code: Tag xml

Xml Situps

The Silliness of SOA