I first saw WOA mentioned in 2006 on a zdnet blog titled called "The SOA with reach: Web-Oriented Architecture" it was posted on the 1st April so I had to take a deep breath and make sure it wasn't a joke. My point is that WOA is just an extension of SOA, and isn't something newly invented, in my opinion it is just the natural progression - and shows how the IT industry can adapt to business or user demands, or just to prove that something new can be invented. Unlike technology specific trends like Java, Groovy, JRuby etc which are created to improve the original technology they either replace or are based upon SOA and WOA acronyms are labels for theories and practices. The benefit of these labels is that they provide a focus for identifying the key requirements that make up the theory, and let people in the industry categorize and know what is being discussed.
So why has it been so difficult to identify the requirements for labelling a Web 2.0 product/solution or component (WIKI entries seem to debate what Web 2.0 is, rather than provide a specific definition) . I believe it is because Web 2.0 is a social phenomenon and has been driven by business or user needs to have information in a easily accessible format and to be able to configure that data to meet their own needs. To enable this requires rich user interfaces provided through Rich Internet Applications (RIA).
More acronyms evolved from SOA:
- User Oriented Architecture (UOA), not sure this exists yet. If it did there would be a close alignment with Business Oriented Architecture. The basics are that users would have maximum flexibility to work with UI widgets and data objects to generate screens how they want them. This could be viewed as an extension to Business Intelligence (BI).
- Business Oriented Architecture (BOA) makes use of BPM and SOA to provide flexible and scalable systems which will enable an organisation to adapt quickly to a changing market place. I believe the driver here is senior executives and the IT department trying to meet business requirements.
Of the two I believe User Oriented Architecture is the most powerful. It can provide great benefits through empowering end users to access data on demand. It could also cause a lot of damage to a business by users manipulating data in an incorrect manner either intentionally or unintentionally resulting in incorrect decisions being made.
Is Web 2.0 just User Oriented Architecture or will Web 3.0 provide this? I believe the answer is no, if User Oriented Architecture were ever to become an adopted term I feel there would be a demand for highly configurable and yet very simple user tools (NOTE - I'm not talking developer IDE's here). These tools would initially be aimed at power users but would eventually reach into the mass market, and would not require in-depth code or development experience, the first steps are mashups or Web 2.0 components and tools such as Yahoo Pipes.
In my opinion the Enterprise is lagging behind in adopting technologies for end users, and in some cases for good reasons. There needs to be some control over how data is accessed and manipulated otherwise there is the risk of not knowing if data is "a fact" and what data has evolved from a mashup of facts to deliver what people want to hear.
Anyway back to where I started Object Oriented Design and Programming are very powerful but if you keep extending the original concept(object), things just end up becoming overcomplicated and over used so diluting the original purpose. Do we need to re-factor some of the terms used in the IT industry to make things simple and more maintainable?
References
- http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9923360-2.html?tag=blogFeed
- http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=114358
- http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/
- http://www.bptrends.com/publicationfiles/TWO%2003-07-ART-ABusinessOrientedArchitecture-Gilbert-Final.pdf
- http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3
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