Scott Stewart

buildings, factories and trains

A recent blog by Ted Neward has created a little give and take on the hot SOA topic. I couldn’t help but chime in. The topic, and the term's missue are just something that I have gotten pretty passionate about lately.

This is actually a follow up to a comment of a comment of a comment (well you get the picture)…

I have to admit that I am biased towards the “SO(A) = = buzz” (or maybe that is choo choo) side of the camp. Now maybe it’s because I am a small time developer, in a small time city, unaware that the SOA train is going to run me over on the way to building a bigger better Metropolis. However, most of the things I work on building on a daily basis are “factories and buildings”. Some client’s and employers like to market them as Enterprise factories and buildings, but they are still for the most part factories and buildings. The problem is that the SOA buzz leads many developers and architects that I speak with, who are in deed designing factories and buildings, to think they need to drive a train between the offices (or dare I say departments) located in the building. This doesn’t make sense. If my factory or building needs to get some goods from this new railroad turning our cities into Metropolises, then by all means take advantage of that. Similarly, if other factories, buildings, cities, or Metropolises can take advantage of goods you offer, then by all means put them on the train. But, be very careful about trying to drive that train inside your building; because the closest it should come to the factory or building is to the building's “edge”. Maybe someday I will become elected to a City council, and my goal will be to create a bigger better City (hopefully this pays better the building “factories and buildings”). When I’m important enough to be entrusted with a task like that, then creating programs that bring the best of all my buildings and factories together will be very important to my ability to grow my city to a Metropolis

I doubt that Pat will ever see this blog entry. However, if he does I hope it is not taken the wrong way. I love the Metropolis speech. I love reading and learning from all things Pat has to offer. I love thinking about the benefits we can realize by taking advantage of functionality already built by separate autonomous systems, and using that functionality between various platforms. I love thinking about the awesome power and concepts that will be realized in Service Oriented Entripises. I love the things that Web Services (and WSE) are doing for us now and promise to do even more of tomorrow. However, I hate the enormous amount of misguided direction and suggestion that when I am building a factory or building I should be running train track between offices. I will always try to place my buildings and factories, as close to as much train track as possible, so that I don’t get left out of the quickly growing Metropolis. I will get whatever goods I can from the train track (as long as they are cheaper then I can get elsewhere), and I will be more then happy to place goods onto the train when others have needs for my goods. I really don’t think this is too far from the true spirit of SOA. But, for whatever reasons (probably too much luggage) the SOA train is currently getting off track and finding its way deep inside our buildings and factories. choo choo