Historically data (data structure) and a program to manipulate it were created at the same time. A payroll program determined its own data, its type and created its own data source. Data created by a program can only be used only by that program and its logic. This approach bonded data and program right from the beginning. This approach was obvious given the historical conditions existing at that time. A Fortran programmer used to create data file for his program only. However when business started using computers, data was common to many departments and hence this approach of marrying data and program from the beginning was practically useful.
What is orientation?
Orientation means direction For instance, an orientation program in cloud computing means, it is a program in which audience is directed towards considering "cloud" as a new approach. Orientation also means " focus". For instance, when we say currently our orientation is towards "saving power" we mean we are focused on "saving power". Another meaning of orientation is using some paradigm as basis for building something. For instance " objected oriented programming" is a programming approach in which " object" paradigm is central to everything. In an orientation, certain implications are obvious.
What is service?
The purpose of business to provide products and services for its customers. In general products are "tangible" things such as "car", soap" or "book" etc. For large part of 19th century business was dominated by product offering. Only in the second half of 2oth century Service became major business component and economic drivers. In fact, current economy is called " service economy" meaning major business transactions involve service offering. Services are "intangible" offering such as "consultancy", "transportation" etc.
In the context of IT business and with the wide spread adoption of web as a major business front, service has gained a broader meaning. For instance, when we use an email such as Gmail/hotmail we are using a "service".
SOA: Indian companies welcome
Indian companies are catching with new business paradigm Service oriented architecture(SOA). According to a recent survey many of the companies have moved from exploration stage to deployment phase in their SOA journey. It has moved from planning and pilot stages to new and encouraging deployment phase. The companies are adopting both ways of shopping for SOA suites and doing a product evaluation within each SOA product category. The leading SOA suites providers are Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. The factors that are driving companies towards SOA way include internal IT integration and third part integration. However, data confidentiality and auditability remained the biggest concerns for moving towards SOA and eventually adopting cloud computing technologies. Other concern that are bogging down a faster adoption of cloud computing services are performance unpredictability ,data transfer bottlenecks and data lock-in issues.
Service Oriented Architecture: Philosophy
Service Oriented architecture(SOA) is a new programming philosophy. Its aim is to seperate data and code creation from the beginning. By doing so, it lets programmer to write code to consume or use data from anywhere and allows data to be used imaginatively by other programmers with bothering to create data for thier programs. Here is an example.
Programmers at http://housingmaps.com/ use data from two different sources. One from http://craiglist.com/ and Google Maps to create a new offering. The new offering or service combines the data from these two sources i.e real estate data from http://craiglist.com/ and map data from Google Maps. The combintation offers a more visual presentation that help buyers to make more informed decision.
input 1: http://craiglist.com/
input 2: http://maps.google.com/
Output is: http://housingmaps.com/
Points to Note:
- Please note that housingmaps does not own any data at all. Nor does it going to create any data for itself. All it does is to access data from two sources.
- Neither the googlemaps nor craiglist can do this service on thier own.
This kind of services ( also known as Maspup) are possible because programmer at housingmaps can consume data generated by others. This is an example of Service oriented architecture (SOA)
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