Are you building SOA or just adding Web Services?
A popular misconception is that by simply adding web services, organizations feel that they have developed and deployed Services oriented architecture (SOA). It is important to understand that though web services implementation may bind you to tweak the application architecture here and there, simply by deploying web services you are not making your application architecture service oriented as a whole (which is the main purpose of SOA). The benefits the a complete SOA deployment far exceed singular web service deployments as SOA is a paradigm shift in the way IT applications and business processes correlate.
To understand this, one needs to be educated on the web services fundamentals:
- Knowledge of need: Do not deploy web services till you can thoroughly justify their need and use in the current scenario. With half baked knowledge of the impact of the web service on the business, you might end up putting your business at higher risk.
- Feasibility Analysis : If you intend to move towards web services but are not sure of the magnitude of the risk, benefit trade-off, it is important to undertake a feasibility analysis. Use models and prototypes to understand the pros and cons of the implementation and how will it impact the business. Develop data classes and simulate real scenarios to understand how things move.
- Re-use Logic: The focus in building SOA should be on using the application logic used in legacy applications. Barring the scenarios where the legacy application logics and components need to be replaced, this is an important technique of minimizing the business risks involved and maximizing the benefits of time tested business logic.
- Understand constraints: It is important to be informed on the constraints of the legacy applications. They must be incorporated in the new architecture if they are robust enough to withstand the new environment. In case their thresholds are not evaluated properly, they may act as bottle-necks in the new enterprise application inter-operability (EAI) model.
- Staggered deployment: Web services implementation is an expensive affair where the results are not measurable in short term. It is often more pragmatic to follow a staggered web services deployment approach where applications are web service enabled one by one and their architecture is molded for integration during this process even if the integration may not be implemented in the near future.
- Think and Innovate: SOA designing is an opportunity to hunt for newer business opportunities. It is a time where you can free your thinking from the existing constraints and think of newer ways enhancing business productivity. You can design applications to maximize the benefits of inter-operability.
For more information on how our web services solutions can enhance your business functions and enterprise applications or for more information on our deployments, please contact us. Know more about xml web services, .Net web service development, soa architecture & implementation, soa enterprise software and testing and its potential use in your business, please contact us. We are a company based in India that offers outsourced web service and SOA consulting and development services.
Further Reading
Web Services Based Hotel Reservation application development and intergration - Case Study
Web Services deployed in DMS - Case Study
Enhancements in Web services based DMS application- News
XML Web services Development
Web services and SOA vision
SOA advantages
Enterprise SOA implementation Architecture
SOA implementation
