There was no consensus among the audience and the lack of a clear way of pronouncing the acronym for Service Oriented Architecture seemed to be a metaphor for the larger problem faced by its advocates.
Chapman said there are multiple definitions of SOA and he lamented that it has in some ways become a marketing buzz word with almost every new software product release touting SOA capabilities or, at least, compatibility.
While the panel discussion was officially titled "Does SOA Help Interoperability?" it really became an attempt to answer the question: "What is SOA?"
The panel that included architects working on standards for SOA was unable to produce a final word on what SOA is. In the end, Chapman, who is consulting member of technical staff at Oracle, concluded that however you pronounce it, SOA is still "a work in progress."
