I think Quest serves as a perfect metaphor for the evolution of my views on SOA and sheds some light on why my vision of Governance differs from those prevailing in the industry. Back in the fall of 2004, I was working for a leading vendor in the EAI and SOA Platform space. Back then, SOA was hot, and, according to our marketing, our product was SOA. Needless to say the competition was saying the exact same things about their offerings. However, as we put more and more enterprise-wide implementations under our belt, it became apparent that the marketing message was not entirely accurate. If you take our products, adopt our methodology and implement them following our guidelines and best practices (even using our professional services), the end result would not be SOA. At least not the way SOA was supposed to be.
Quest for True SOA
September 11, 2008