IX.  The "Hype" - SOA - ESA - ESB

    A.  SOA - Service Oriented Architecture

        1.  Ever since there were two computers, people have been trying to make them work together.
            And you just knew that Sun's RPC, Microsoft's COM and DCOM, and CORBA would grow into 
            something useable over the Internet.  I say "useable" because the best parts of those 
            systems - cross-platform, high-level, interlanguage - were cloaked in complex ORB (Object 
            Request Broker) systems, proprietary ownership, and confusing IDLs (Interface Definition 
            Language).

        2.  Enter the "web services dream"

            a)  XML loosens the shackles of proprietary hardware and proprietary languages

            b)  HTTP frees us from the complexity of ORBs, sockets, and all other connectivity issues.

        3.  Now, apply these concepts to the enterprise as a whole, and the outcome is something 
            like "service oriented architecture," or "enterprise service architecture," or 
            "enterprise service bus."

    B.  What is SOA really?*

        1.  Again, we would like to recommend an outstanding article to you.  This time from the 
            O'Reilly webservices.xml.com WWW site.  It's by Dr. Hao He, a systems architect at 
            Thomson Corporation and active member of the W3C Web Service Architecture Group.  The 
            title of his article is "What is Service-Oriented Architecture?"  He gives down to 
            earth examples in explaining the concept and has provided "related reading" links to 
            aid you in digging deeper.  There's also an online discussion provided at that site!

    Let us know what you think - especially about SOA "best practices"!  

    "The EDIGuys"

* - Note:  From the academic perspective, cf. "Service-Oriented Design:  A Multi-viewpoint Approach"
           (check out the footnotes!)