SOA Manifesto revisited

The publication of the SOA Manifesto generates a lot of discussion. As my fellow ACE Director Hajo Normann states on his blog:

I wish for the SOA Manifesto to serve as a guiding foundation for many proposals and solutions in SOA space – similarly as the Agile Manifesto served beautifully well for many to start thinking Agile.

I really hope that will become true. There's been so much discussion about SOA lately, and I still feel that there's still no consensus on what it really means. The SOA manifesto is but a first step in aligning SOA practitioners around the world. I think Thomas Erl and Anne Thomas Manes put it quite clearly during their 'exorcism of the evil SOA': it's the vendors' fault.

Initially, SOA has been hyped by just about all the vendors, in a way to push their middleware technology. Truth is: a lot of middleware technology is based on service orientation, but that does not mean it will give you SOA. SOA is a mindset, a paradigm you can use when building or integrating applications.

The manifesto itself is nice and compact, but will need additional refinement and explanation to make it really worthwile. I hope the working group for the SOA manifesto will be seen by many as experienced SOA practitionists if not SOA thought-leaders. That will broaden its acceptance.

If nothing else, it will facilitate the discussion around SOA. Hopefully we can bring it to an end soon. Thanks to the SOA Manifesto ....