New SOA Manifesto walks the middle road

by Rob Barry

A group of SOA experts released a SOA Manifesto on Oct. 23, which sets out in 106 words the principles they feel are most important to the popular integration strategy. While some may think of SOA as something like Enterprise Architecture, and others, agile development, the SOA manifesto walks a middle road.

Several industry thought-leaders have signed the document, including Grady Booch, Toufic Boubez, Thomas Erl and Anne Thomas Manes.

The manifesto frames SOA as something that should focus on business objectives while remaining agile and interoperable. Some of the major priorities it lays out are:

• Business value over technical strategy
• Shared services over specific-purpose implementations
• Flexibility over optimization
• Evolutionary refinement over pursuit of initial perfection

This is all very reminiscent of the Agile Manifesto, which hit the scene in 2001. It sets forward a basic set choices between conflicting principals.

The lines in the sand have been drawn. What do you think? Leave us a comment.