, 1 min read
The end of SOA web services
The Web is the biggest success story in IT ever. Well, maybe Walmart would come close behind. What bugs me is that people still don’t understand why the web is a success. It is not because Tim Berners-Lee is a great scientist. He had the wrong big idea about the web, but as a great hacker, he implemented the basics very well (including HTTP) and that’s what took off.
Information technology and engineering is not unlike science. Most often, the simplest and most elegant theory that can explain the data wins. For some strange reasons, researchers often tend to prefer complicated ideas maybe because they are train to formalize everything. In IT, the simplest and most elegant model that can satisfy our needs ought to win. Good engineers and IT experts know this, intuitively. That’s what Tim gave us, nearly the simplest solution that will work, and that’s why his name will go in the history books.
Regarding web services, the answer is not SOA, but rather REST. The writing is on the wall and has been there for years. Why? It is simply not the simplest solution that will work.
SOA may have meant something once but it’s just vendor bullshit now. (…) The crucial point is that Web-like things should be simple and lightweight and easy to set up; so I think the Web part of Web Services is more important than the Services part. SOA isn’t the future, Web style is. (Source: Tim Bray)