This blog post is part one of an ongoing series highlighting the importance of data in a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and in Business Process Management (BPM). I look forward to hearing your thoughts and input on the subject.
In 2005, I attended several SOA conferences and tried to discuss ‘data’ with attendees and vendors. Most people looked at me quizzically then ignored the topic, saying that SOA will abstract away concerns about data types, formats, location, and such. While some nodded about the importance of data semantics, there was little appreciation of the fact that without some kind of ‘data abstraction layer’ for services to utilize, everyone will end up solving the same data access, cleansing, transformation, semantic translation, and integration problems again and again, this time within java code buried within the services themselves, creating a complex, new ‘Integration Hairball’. Ouch!
But now, almost three years later, data is front and center. With new technologies, people seem to realize that this new ‘Integration Hairball’ will be created in a fraction of the time it took to create the existing, pre-SOA hairball, unless proper approaches to the ‘data problem’ are taken into account with respect to people, processes and technology around data utilized in the SOA initiatives.
Without taking the data into account from the beginning, SOA is just the next evolution of CORBA, COM, client/server, etc. Certainly, SOA can have benefits by itself, but it’s necessary to recognize that it isn’t complete without having a plan to manage the ‘data problem’.
SOA adoption has been accelerating, as can be observed from the various IT initiatives that involve using SOA approaches for delivering a more flexible and responsive IT infrastructure. According to a survey by IDG Research , 91% of CIOs are planning, evaluating or piloting SOA projects. That certainly reflects strong optimism about the ultimate benefits of SOA, even if it means investing months or years in development and testing to get there.
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Figure – “Data” is the Common Theme across Many SOA Initiatives (Source: CIO2CIO Study Program, IDG Research, April 17, 2007)
According to the survey conducted by IDG Research, “data” seems to be the common theme across various SOA projects in the enterprise:
• Business flexibility and reusability of software assets and services built on a foundation of quality data
• Project scope driven by the extent to which data and applications touch the entire business
• SOA “readiness” involving more upfront work, namely testing and data quality assurance, than anticipated
SOA does represent a fundamental change in the way businesses are run, a move from rigid, tightly-coupled systems to loosely-coupled systems where applications are built more successfully using reusable components. Thus, for those building the services for others to consume, they must know the location, format, structure, quality, usage and context of data, even if they’ll be abstracting away those complexities for others. Simply put, when it comes to SOA, data management and integration have never been more important.
I believe that the pay-off for SOA will be great if implemented carefully and correctly with the appropriate up-front emphasis given to the data. More controversially, I believe SOA will be a failure WITHOUT emphasis on the data. Obviously, data is not the only, nor perhaps the most, critical factor to SOA success. I’m just saying that it’s an important one that must not be ignored.
Your thoughts? Dive in with your experiences.
Next up “SOA’s Last Mile Part II: SOA’s Hidden Data-Centric Pitfalls”
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