Talk:Service-oriented architecture

A Serious Rewrite is Needed

Just restored this section header to being such PJTraill (talk) 16:33, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, this article is a mess. The intro is completely at odds with the rest of the article, which is rife with POV statements. The intro itself does not take into account the full scope of the article, and is, in my opinion, in itself cruising extremely close to POV. Taken in its entirety, this article more closely resembles an argument than an encyclopedic entry.

SOA is granular - it means different things at different levels of abstraction. It can be applied at a business process level, a user experience level, and a systems design & development level - each with their own definition of the concept, as defined in 'vernacular' terms.

I think the article needs to reflect this, while at the same time providing an entry point for newcomers to the subject without drowning them with the jargon of any one particular level.Gabhala 00:30, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree, this article is a prototype example of a wikipedia article gone mad. My problem was that reading the article simply didn't prove useful. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. The content is vague and wandering, as often happens in wiki articles. Many of the paragraphs seem to be "blobs" rather than a sequential series of sentences that crystallize a central point, which is really a paragraph's job.
2. The sentence structures of many of the sentences are technically valid but so complicated that they leave the reader to say "Huh? What was that?"
3. Many, many sentences have grammatical problems. I was going to start to correct some of the plural conflicts (things like "the man throws a ball, men throw a ball") but I found so many of them that I decided I didn't have that kind of patience tonight.

This article reminded me of one of those product manuals that is translated from another language into English through a literal, word-for-word translation. Mroesler 04:03, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The intro is very poor and seems to reflect one person's POV - SOA *is* primarily a distributed computing paradigm, as the rest of the article reflects. If SOA is used in areas other than computing, some examples (with references) would be helpful. There are enough books and articles out there that virtually every statement in this article could either be backed up by a reference or removed.--Michig 09:22, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.82.252.10 (talk) 23:58, 14 June 2008 (UTC) 

Sadly it is still a mess almost four years later. Jann.poppinga (talk) 09:06, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I revised the first paragraph in an attempt to open the topic up a little to the way SOA is being used today, hoping someone can step into the space and add more current content. As written, the topic addresses an audience that sounds like it might be an IT person who is on the fence about adopting SOA. I would like the topic to also address a young programmer who is well beyond that fence, and is instead playing in a space where SOA concepts apply everywhere in software development today, and where the internet and its services have become truly transparent so that concepts like SOA are almost taken for granted and are just part of the overall mind-share on how to develop software anymore. Does anyone out there agree with my perspective on this? I am hoping so ... but we'll see what ends up happening to my edit tonight.  ; )

Maura Driscoll (talk) 05:30, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. Wikipedia is for all audiences — for anyone simply trying to find factual information on a topic — and should not be written with any specific audience in mind or from any specific perspective or preconcieved notions. Please see WP:NPOV --hulmem (talk) 16:11, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Very much agreed, Hulmem. I tried to say something similar, but it looks like I said it quite poorly!!! At least I scored a great link out of the deal - WP:NPOV - thank you for that one!!! Excellent and very much agreed!!! Maura Driscoll (talk) 21:30, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Too many people blowing smoke up each others asses here.. trying to be semantically correct. I will rewrite this when I get a moment. What I will say is that someone has made an attempt to share information even if it is misguided. A few clues here.. Stop trying to mix up SOA with web services... SOA has been around a long time now and there are some very elegant implementations and previous incarnations.. So there we go .. it is both a methodology and a technology.. Now. as technologies evolve and develop, we begin to understand the relevance of things like web services (WS) and so on but then also how things like 'semantics' , 'lexicons'and ontologies play into this. I guess the moral of the story is evolution and growth of knowledge and it's application

To fully understand the context of SOA the notion of atomic structure and nested SOA needs to be considered and understood.

have a nice day :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhysgambling (talk • contribs) 21:58, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The first sentence, 'SOA is an architectural style that supports service orientation', is really a circular definition that doesn't tell us anything. Tcdaly (talk) 14:10, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Came here to say the same as Tcdaly said. Basically the intro says "SOA is an A that is SO" -- which is no help at all. I also submit that it's nothing to do with or connected in any way to, for instance, modular programming. Liam Proven (talk) 16:55, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, tagged it, wondering if SOA is just a fluff term with no meaningful application or perhaps a misdirection like SaaS

..or at maybe it just needs to be split into different articles for software and business Licriss (talk) 11:04, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Continuum?

This sentence needs some explaining, if it's even accurate: One can consider SOA a continuum, as opposed to distributed computing or modular programming. Huh? Because up to this point, SOA has been described exactly like a form of distributed computing. Is there a reference? Because it makes no sense. —MiguelMunoz (talk) 21:07, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I went through the article's history and found out that, in it's younger days, the sentence read like this: SOA can be seen in a continuum, from older concepts of distributed computing and modular programming, through to current practices of mashups, SaaS, and Cloud Computing (which some see as the offspring of SOA). (Emphasis added.) And yes, it had references. (This comes from the version dated July 1, 2009) Needless to say, this alters the meaning. I put back the original sentence, altered slightly for clarity, complete with the original references. —MiguelMunoz (talk) 23:04, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Even with the fix, this sentence just seems odd. The word 'continuum' is lazily and inappropriately borrowed from other fields. Look at the link-to article: you'll find definitions of 'continuum' in the fields of physics, math, philosophy, and psychology; none from the history of technology. I think 'progression' may be what's really meant here. Hult041956 (talk) 21:46, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Relationship to Web service

It seems there is some close relationship, if not equivalence, between SOA and Web services. Can someone clarify the relationship? --Kvng (talk) 15:09, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Web services is a implementation of SOA as is stated in the article in the Implementation approaches section, although it is presented like Web services is the main solution and some others might be used as well. The article also includes a reference in the criticism section that they should not be mixed up. However, the article mixes them up all over the place. The article is heavily biased towards Web services. 84.27.42.9 (talk) 11:37, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Does SOA have the same role and duties as the traditional operating system on a single computer?

I see in the paragraph "In a large network of computers SOA has the same role and duties as the traditional operating system on a single computer. Consequently SOA is designed in analogy to traditional multi-tasking operating systems like Windows, Unix, zOS etc." the attempt to make the SOA concept more understandable, however it is misleading: operating system processes are mandatory to run a computer and, as such, they always perform fundamental and centrally supervised operations, while SOA services are not necessarily in the network running. I suggest to suppress the quoted paragraph. Vittorioolivati (talk) 15:38, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree. The analogy isn't even particularly accurate in my opinion. --HighKing (talk) 14:26, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Broken Link

A cited article "The Reason SOA Isn’t Delivering Sustainable Software" in "Criticism" section has a broken link, the only version I found on the web is http://soa.xxxxx.com/news/do-not-publishthe-reason-soa where xxxx is dzone, sice dzone.com is blacklisted by wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.234.41.128 (talk) 18:42, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Warning

Apparently, a student in a class project has been assigned to this article. Keep an eye on it. See Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/North Carolina State University/Object Oriented Design and Development (Fall 2016). -- Gestrid (talk) 21:41, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Use in sentence does not agree with definition of service mesh

The service mesh article specifically says its an infrastructures thing, which means it could serve a SOA, or something of the sorts. Snorkop (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Definition is not correct

In the first line it says: "In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design." Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that has a broader scope than just software engineering. It can be used in business architecture as well for example. In my opinion, this means that the concept is undesirably restricted to software development while it is about "a way of thinking".

Furthermore, the referenced source is not quoted correctly because it doesn't speak about 'discrete services instead of monolithic design'. It says: "Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that supports service orientation". It would be better to use that sentence, together with the correct quote "Service orientation is a way of thinking in terms of services and service-based development and the outcomes of services" a little further on.

Adgerrits (talk) 09:24, 11 October 2022 (UTC)