People have thought of establishing a relationship between SOA and Web 2.0 for quite some time. However, Dion Hinchcliffe notes that: … these two cultures are generally failing to cross-pollinate like they should, despite potentially extraordinary opportunities.
From an architecture perspective, a few people have barely started to look at how the two fit. In this article Ganesh Prasad, Senior Architect in a large financial institution, Rajat Taneja and Rhys Frederick, both consultants, detail their analysis of how SOA and Web 2.0 relate, by defining SOFEA, the service-oriented front-end architecture.
In the past few months, Mashup frameworks have started to bridge the gap between the two, and new products from companies such as IBM, or WSO2 are now focused principally on associating a Web 2.0 user experience with the consumption RESTful or Web Services.
