This is a single archived entry from Stefan Tilkov’s blog. For more up-to-date content, check out my author page at INNOQ, which has more information about me and also contains a list of published talks, podcasts, and articles. Or you can check out the full archive.

OASIS SOA Reference Model - Public Review

Stefan Tilkov,

This 28 page document [PDF] from OASIS aims to describe a reference model for SOA [via Mark Baker; here is the announcement].

I only spend a few minutes with it, and I’m not too impressed — it seems rather vague and shallow to me. But I seem to have a bad SOA week, I’ll try to post a more informed opinion in a few days …

On February 23, 2006 4:53 PM, Mike Glendinning said:

Indeed, one must question the usefulness of any document that proudly states (and I’m paraphrasing slightly from lines 38-39 here):

…the reference model … is at least three levels of abstraction away from a physical entitity …

Talk about architecture astronautics or what?!

Not just a week, I’ve been having a bad SOA 18 months. Whatever a SOA is, and for all the hype, I still haven’t seen a precise description of exactly what the business benefits are, how SOA achieves them and therefore why it is a “good thing”.

The available glib explanations, such as those in Section 2.3 of this document just don’t cut it with me. I am still waiting to see concrete explanations of exactly how a SOA approach (uniquely) solves any real problems involved with the creation, integration, migration and replacement of IT systems.