Understanding and implementing SOA in a middleware environment

If the data from the Internet is reduced to its basic constituents, such as data fields and allied strings of information, then the resulting protocol can be read by almost any IT system.

This process is called the creation of metadata and forms the corner-stone of allowing quite complex data to be exchanged between the Internet and company IT systems, whether they are mainframe or PC client/server-based.

It's this process of data interchange that allows IT professionals to create a federation of resources and, in the process, allow the re-use of program code between what are traditionally viewed as different computing platforms.

This is SOA at its best.

If we go back to the 1980s when several different home computing platforms were around, including the BBC Model B, Commodore C64 and Sinclair Spectrum, the biggest problem facing the software houses of the day was how to develop games and applications that could be easily ported between the various platforms.

The more advanced programmers of the day quickly realised that code porting was the wrong approach.

Instead, they used an SOA modelling approach to define the various elements of each application - typically clusters of machine code for the different computing platforms - and how those elements interacted.

Using this approach allowed programmers to re-use the elements on different platforms, using and re-using the program code to perform the specific functions of each computing platform.

Fast-forward two decades and we can apply the same principles to integrating data and programs both within a company and outside, as well as exchanging data intelligently with the Internet.