SOA challenges and Web 3.0

There is unfortunately quite a big gap between the hype of Service-Oriented Architecture and the ability to deliver it at a true enterprise scale with all essential elements of sustainability like monitoring and quality of service.

Loosely Coupled blogs the situation in SOA immaturity dogs early adopters

The gap between vision and reality in SOA tools and best practice is putting pressure on organizations as they implement projects:

• Early adopter Starwood bemoans the lack of role models
• Federated integration brings risk of cascade failures
• Infrastructure and management tools are still emerging
• AAA Carolinas cites concerns over web services access
• Meanwhile, business users blithely demand rapid results

ZDNet's Phil Wainewright is at the same time looking forward to Web 3.0 (yes, three point oh).  He has a series of postings:

• What to expect from Web 3.0
• The missing feature at the heart of Web 3.0
• Web 3.0: The API-driven application
• The four application pillars of enterprise 3.0

In particular I would signal the "missing feature" posting, as the missing feature is: revenue.
Yes, I am going to continue to hammer away at this topic.
Until there are some realistic business models for this stuff, we are in a service-oriented fairytale (to borrow a phrase from Thomas Erl).
(Until we have some workable infrastructures and processes, we are also in fairyland, but that's another issue.)
I love this paragraph:

Probably the most crucial feature missing from Web 2.0 can be summed up in one word: revenue.  Ever wondered why virtually every Web 2.0 wannabee is offering their service for free?  The reason is no one has figured out how anyone pays for this stuff. The only thing keeping it going at present is the sheer enthusiasm of the entrepreneurs themselves, with the lucky ones getting funded by VCs who hope to cash in when they flip the concept to a well-heeled trade buyer like Google, Microsoft or eBay.  [Editor's comment: or say Yahoo and CNet...]

It's funny actually, the language that we use.  Software engineering seems to be a field where "X is in a state of immaturity" seems often to hold.  Don't tell anyone, but we haven't quite figured out what we're doing yet.  There's a reason Gartner has a hype curve (SOA, trough of disillusionment?  That sounds about right)  Intelligent agents?  (At peak of hype in Gartner cycle for 1995.)  Yes, they were going to solve all our problems.  And then, err, you want me to let WHAT from some outsider roam around my internal systems?  And we're going to pay for this HOW?

So you'll see the software engineery people talking about how such and such a thing is ... well... a sort of metaphysical concept... that one day will take us to the current utopia of choice (servicetopia?)

Here are some extracts from a presentation What is an Agent and Why Should I Care? (PDF) by Clint Heinze from 2003:

Agents are three things (at least)

1. They are a state of mind
- A philosophical way of viewing the world
- A software design stance
- An orientation

I said in my SOA Symposium presentation, where I (and others) took a similar line on SOA: "you thought you were going to get technogeeks talking about computers and networks, instead you got technophilosophers..."

So Where Are We?

• Confused
• Lots of definitions
•   Some general
•   Some specialised
• However all is not lost

...

Agents Are Immature

• Problem for wider interchangeability and reusability
• Problems learning from the lessons of others
• Problems finding experienced agent developers
• Just go ahead and build your system
•   Use best software engineering practices
•   Use others experience when you can

Yes, we technophilosophers do all speak the same language.  Replace "agents" with "SOA" in the above and hey... sounds like my SOA presentation.  Which leads me to this wonderful quote from Roger King in 1989, introduced to me in the SOA Symposium in the very entertaining presentation from Vojislav B. Mišić:

“I have a cat named Trash. In the current political climate, it would seem that if I were trying to sell him (at least to a Computer Scientist), I would not stress that he is gentle to humans and is self sufficient, living mostly on field mice. Rather, I would argue that he is object-oriented.”

"My cat is object-oriented", Roger King, 1989
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/63320.66469

Clint Heinz, in the tradition of reuse, changed this to end... "is agent-oriented."

Vojislav changed it to end ... "is service-oriented."

You see, we software engineers, we are all about reuse AND progress.

Previously:
2005-Dec-10  hype 2.0, yahoo, and business models (I guess I'm behind the times, I will have to upgrade to hype 3.0 :)