S D Oh tell me why

Not so long after the announcement of SCA (that's service component architecture) came SDO (service data objects). These 2 concepts were hailed as the pillars of IBM's SOA strategy (which apparently includes buying any company with an 'S' in their name). To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what's the point of SDO.

To me it seems like standardization is taking one step too far and ending up in the application realm. These SDOs are supposed to be what's passed between services. In my book, that's just a message. You want standardization? Make JMS XML based, whatever that'll give you.

Seriously, the payload of these messages is entirely application specific. Besides saying that the payload can be transformed to XML, is there anything left to be said?

On the consumer side of these specs, I have to say that there is increasing confusion. Many take these specs as a form of guidance when all they're really about is getting the tools from various vendors to interoperate better.

Maybe it's all just a marketing ploy, with each company trying to one up the others with the number of specs that their products support. I wouldn't be surprised.

Posted by Udi Dahan at 04:50 PM  Permalink