Based on the earsplitting buzz over the past year, you might get the idea that Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) really is the Next Big Thing in information technology. If you buy the hype, you could be tempted to believe that SOA is, or at least ought to be, the key to future software development in the enterprise. Nonsense! It's nothing of the sort. SOA is a plausibly good and sometimes even useful idea that has been blown far out of proportion by various parties with their own axes to grind, including:
- IT vendors who pour SOA as their own "special sauce" over their tired legacy solutions, which are more costly, cumbersome, difficult to use and tied into hardware and software platforms.
- IT guru firms that peddle high-priced snake oil as "expert advice" and use high-sounding, yet vague and obscure terminology to cloak the utter banality and limited practical value of what they're saying.
