How To Plan for SOA 2.0

What's Ahead: Advanced SOA

Organizations that have completed at least one service-oriented architecture project should move on to what analysts have begun calling "advanced SOA."

What's the difference? Most current deployments are based on request-reply, while advanced SOA involves so-called event-driven architectures, says Yefim Natis, a Gartner vice president.

In request/reply SOA, a service retrieves information or performs an action on behalf of the requester to produce a result. Middleware for request/reply SOA includes Java Remote Method Invocation or the Java API for XML. An example of request/reply is a remote database query, where a database server takes an incoming request from a remote client, processes the request and sends back a result to the client.

Event-driven SOA has the sources, or initiators of activity, notify the environment of a change and the execution code that processes the notification at some point, possibly after additional events are detected. The middleware is typically messaging or publish/subscribe services provided through Java Message Service, IBM WebSphere MQ and Tibco Rendezvous. Event-driven activities include management of incoming calls at a help desk and systems management.

Next page: Tips for Advanced SOA

Tips for Advanced SOA

Proceed slowly. Moving to SOA brings major upheaval. It's not something done overnight.

Consider hiring experienced consultants or systems integrators to help build an SOA environment. At the same time, keep employees involved in projects, to increase knowledge about SOA and lessen the reliance on outside help.

Develop best practices for SOA, including how to build and manage reusable components.

Create metrics that effectively demonstrate the business value of SOA.