WEB 2.0 versus SOA?

WEB 2.0 versus SOA?

So I’m reading Blogs -- which is suspect to begin with because I’m sure there’s just a bunch of random content out there in the blog world right? And, I run across several Blogs on “WEB 2.0 versus SOA”.

Let me tell you friends -- if someone is trying to pit WEB 2.0 versus SOA they either don’t understand WEB 2.0, they don’t understand SOA or both. I thought Joe McKendrick did a good job of describing the irrelevance of this argument as far as CTOs are concerned here.

WEB 2.0 is a UI presentation technology; it is an approach to building the interface of applications. It’s complementary to SOA, which is a way to establish the decomposition of business logic to establish service-based workflows--to break apart monolithic systems into services such that collaboration among services is more rapid and more agile.

SOA is not a UI technology. So what you can accomplish with WEB 2.0 is synergistic with what you can do with SOA.

By the way, don’t misread this and therefore presume that SOA requires WEB 2.0.(because that Blog, I am sure will be the next Blog I see if I go Googling a little bit more) and that’s not correct either.

You can build SOA with C code and Windows Client UI written in VB if you wish. The goal here is to try to establish a little more sanity in what these things actually are.

So, let’s review: WEB 2.0 is a great way to put a thin client yet interactive user experience on the desktop. SOA is a great way to go about the process of decomposing systems into services and making business alignments through business process management.

- John Michelsen, founder and Chief Architect, iTKO LISA