SOA: Focus on the fundamentals

I’ve noticed that those charged with building enterprise SOAs are working on establishing approaches to the implementation of their SOA instance — they are not yet looking for “key enabling SOA technology,” at least not yet. This means that they are setting up methodologies, defining deliverables, and determining how all of these artifacts are related. What’s more, they are focusing on education, and understanding just what they are doing before they do it. We have learned from the past that quick movements towards a technology trend without the proper amount of upfront thinking typically results in failure.

So, what are people working on?

1. Modeling and implementation. Holistic modeling of the SOA and all of its working parts.

1. Security design and implementation. Figuring out how you’re going to secure and govern your SOA.

1. Semantic understanding and metadata modeling. Identifying all application semantics and defining the common metadata model.

1. Service design and implementation. Designing services properly, implementing them, and tracking them.

1. Orchestration and process modeling. Modeling processes, and implementing them directly from the model.

If you ask me, this is a good trend. Whether it’s the attraction of SOA as the hot new technology, or perhaps the reinvention of existing technology, most enterprise architects view SOA as a key strategic initiative, and are not willing to risk failure. This is evident in the slow uptake to SOA, now accelerating, as larger organizations do some advanced planning as well as deal smarter with the notion of SOA, keeping in mind it’s really a journey not a destination.

Finding an approach is not that easy, however. There certainly is a great deal written on this topic by some very smart people, but the right approach for your particular organization may be a bit different from the generalized approaches/methodologies you see around today. In other words, you’ll be doing some planning to create the plan. For instance, when I wrote the 12 Steps to SOA a few years ago, I was creating a general purpose checklist of tasks as well as deliverables to assist organizations in implementing their SOA. Now, though, I’m finding that some organizations have expanded it to 14 steps, and others reduced it to 11, again, customizing the approach for their specific requirements, and that’s okay by me.