Re: [News] IBM's Recruits SOA to Fight Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems
"Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1223397.TlQBnlJPDx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Industry shift to services fuels IBM spree
,----[ Quote ]
| SOA is an approach to designing back-end systems in a modular way
| and, usually, around industry standards. If done well, a company can
| reuse software components, rather than duplicate existing work, andm
| ore easily share information among disparate systems.
`----
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6107864.html
It's probably (almost exclusively) Linux-based. IBM's study found Linux to
be
tremendously lower in terms of TCO and recently boosted its commitment to
Linux.
It's not a requirement, but SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is based
almost entirely around HTTP and webservers. The whole idea, actually, is
that it doesn't matter what's going on under the hood. The web server could
be running Linux, MacOS, Windows, DOS, AmigaOS, or any other operating
system, as long as it provides the appropriate service over the web.
There's also an emphasis in using avoiding binary formats that might
require documentation and more emphasis on XML, which is theoretically self
documenting.
Compare
1001110101110111011000010110101010111001110010101011101001011001001
with
<CustomerInvoice id="2930">
<Item id="kl-93822002038" description="AMD Dual Core 4200+ processor"
price="240.00"/>
</CustomerInvoice>
In my experience, setting up a Apache/MySQL/PHP environment is just as
easy in Linux as it is in Windows (it's easy in both cases, in case it needs
to be explicitly said). So if I had to set up a new computer, I'd obviously
choose Linux, as it's free (as in beer), and the maintenance costs is
negligeable. However, if I already had a webserver set up in Windows, I'd
just use the existing software, rather than spend money on a new box, or
spend effort reformating and installing Linux.
One of the advantages with SOA is interoperability. You don't have to
ensure that the next server you add to your cluster uses the same operating
system as your existing computers; you just have to make sure it can serve
web pages. So if you're already a Microsoft shop with 500 boxes running
Windows Server 2003, your 501st box can be a Linux one without any migration
costs.
- Oliver
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