Ash Parikh
Revive Enterprise Architecture With Transformational SOA Data Integration
On November 10, Informatica made history with the launch of Informatica 9. In my mind, being a SOA enthusiast, another equally significant event transpired – the birth of SOA-based Data Services – transformational SOA data integration that can revive your enterprise architecture.
So, what exactly are SOA-based Data Services and why am I so excited?
How To Get Started with Data-Orientation – What Architects Told Me…
In my previous post To Successfully Service-Orient, Data-Orient First!, I shared the input I received from architects and IT managers, to serve as a handy check-list for ensuring a solid foundation for success in service-oriented infrastructures.
The following are the data-orientation capabilities they recommended as a first step in successfully service-orienting an infrastructure:
- Easy access of all relevant data, including new or rapidly changing data sources
- Seamless processing of data as batch, change data capture or real-time, including handling large volumes of large data sets
- Proactive identification and resolution of data inaccuracies
- Application of complex data transformations on the data
- Delivery of data, exactly when it is needed, as a standards-based data service
To Successfully Service-Orient, Data-Orient First!
I have firmly believed that a day would come when it would be you, my fellow integrators, telling me that one needs to data-orient first before benefiting from service-orientation. That day has indeed come!
Just recently, I created a quick one question survey and sent it off to a number of application and enterprise architects as well as IT managers at leading enterprises. The question was:
- What are the top three things on your mind as you architect or re-architect your infrastructures?
There was a common thread across the responses that I received:
-
Service-orientation or an architectural approach to increase the speed and agility of how IT responds to a business’ requests,
-
Doing more with less or something to that effect, and
-
An easy way to leverage all relevant information, when it is needed and how it is needed
When I saw these responses, the pragmatic part of me started to build a list of questions in my head and I decided to call a number of these professionals and get the real scoop on their selections.
Here is what I heard…
What Is SOA? And, If You Are Doing It, Is Your SOA Going To Die Before It Has A Chance To Live?
Before I start on this extremely polarizing topic, I really want to ask the question – do you want your SOA to be ineffective or die before it has a chance to live?
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, SOA does have a significantly big “blind spot,” which so often gets ignored due to the sheer size of the vehicle you are riding in – which I define as – the complexity of your enterprise infrastructure, the various avatars or stakeholders that are directly or indirectly impacted by integration challenges, departmental divides and ownership issues, debates around modernization, and of course, budget, time and resources.
Hopefully you answered the question with an emphatic NO!
Enough Already About “What Is SOA?” Let’s Discuss Some Real-World Myths About SOA…
I am back after a somewhat self-imposed hiatus during which I have been doing some soul-searching, or rather talking to a number of practitioners, experts, thought-leaders and analysts in the integration space. My singular quest was to uncover some real-world myths about SOA.
I spoke to a variety of integration experts – enterprise and application architects, application developers, data architects and data integration developers. During these interesting conversations, we discussed real-world SOA…or let me qualify that term further as real-world “service-orientation.”
Of course we discussed paradigms such as “loose-coupling,” “modularity,” “services,” etc., but more importantly in many cases, we spoke at length about how they were falling short of realizing the promised benefits of SOA. On probing each usage scenario further, I chanced upon a couple of interesting myths about SOA, which I would like to share with you. (more…)
Why the Downturn is Good for SOA, Information-as-a-Service or Data Services!
With so much talk out there about how SOA is being affected by the downturn, a recent article by David Linthicum seems to point in the direction of pragmatic optimism.
In a column entitled Why the Downturn is Good for SOA from a recent issue of SOAWorld Magazine, Dave says that “as budgets contract and SOA teams downsize, you’d think that SOA projects would be all doom and gloom and lacking in productivity. However, the opposite seems to be occurring, at least inside my client base.” This is encouraging coming from an SOA expert, so let’s see what else he had to say.
What is Service-Oriented Architecture or What is SOA? Real-World Observations!
Before we can have lengthy discussions around whether SOA is dead, or SOA is alive and kicking, I thought that it would serve us all well, including myself, to get to a generally agreed upon definition of what exactly we are talking about – what is Service-Oriented Architecture or SOA?
According to Wikipedia, “service-oriented architecture (SOA) provides methods for systems development and integration where systems group functionality around business processes and package these as interoperable services.”
This sounds like a definition right out of a technical book, while SOA’s biggest claim to fame was based on a more business-like perspective which is its promise of agility achieved through the alignment of business and IT. Let’s see if we can dig up some real-world observations around the current state of SOA.
Service-Orientation is the New Mantra!
If you have been following the blog circles lately, there is a big buzz about SOA being dead. It all started with a recent blog post by Anne Thomas Manes in which she says “although the word ‘SOA’ is dead, the requirement for service-oriented architecture is stronger than ever.”
SOA at its very core is simply an architectural approach and not a technology stack nor a vendor-recommended product or platform. As Anne says, “they missed the important stuff: architecture and services.”
As I have always maintained, an SOA implementation can be as simple as a few business services that wrap business or application logic, and in its most complex form it can be an entire ecosystem of technologies selected based on thoroughly analyzing needs and that most importantly support service-orientation principles. (more…)
SOAWorld Conference & Expo – “Data is FOUNDATIONAL to SOA!”
Data is FOUNDATIONAL to SOA! This seemed to be the main message at the recently concluded SOAWorld Conference & Expo in San Jose. I heard this message being articulated in various ways at the sessions, the power panels, on the expo floor as well as from other attendees.
But, the best articlulation of this message came from industry expert David Linthicum. I was lucky to get out of my customer meetings in time to make it to Dave’s keynote address. I tried to capture some of Dave’s thoughts and recommendations around how to win with SOA the first time:
- Understand that SOA is something you do and not BUY
- Begin with architecture and not the technology
- Focus on the business need and identify all the ROI aspects upfront
- ROI with SOA is very strategic – think a year, not one or two months
- Understand the information management requirements and architecture
- Figure out how to get a single definition of CUSTOMER, SALE or PRODUCT
- Bind the information into the processes you have
In response to a question I asked Dave during his keynote about how he saw information architectures play in the overall SOA picture, he said that ”DATA IS ABSOLUTELY FOUNDATIONAL TO SOA.” He went on to elaborate that if a company designs its SOA without thinking about its information architecture, the company will fail to reap the benefits of SOA. He also noted that the typical problem is that different teams own the traditional SOA pieces and data, making things even more difficult to architect and implement the SOA correctly the first time.
Based on the various customer interactions I have been having, I fully concur with Dave. As a customer recently shared with me, they wished that they had started their SOA journey with a solid information-centric foundation that used sophisticated data services to serve up timely and accurate information to the various components in their SOA.
What do you think? Did you attend the conference, and if so, what were your observations?
Data Services – The Silver Bullet for SOA’s Data Integration Pitfalls
In the post “SOA’s Last Mile Part III: How to Address SOA’s Hidden Data-Centric Pitfalls Effectively,” David Lyle spoke about some high-level approaches to handling the data-centric pitfalls in an SOA.
I would like to introduce you to the solution…what I call data services, a flexible and cost-effective technology that can be the cornerstone of an SOA and EIM strategy by simplifying the complexity of both integrating diverse enterprise data that exists in individual silos as well as delivering a single, accurate and consistent view of all enterprise information, at the speed of business.
(more…)
Loading ...