lustratus LiteBytes

As the debate over SOA and reuse continues, I noticed…

…a blog entry on ITtoolbox from Eric Roch saying

First of all, I think the term SOA reuse is semantically incorrect. You are not really reusing services; you are simply using them and hopefully for multiple purposes.

Eric’s entry was interesting, but I have to argue with this statement. Although in one sense Eric is correct, in that the desire is to create a service and then use it for multiple purposes, this is too impersonal. The question is, who will use this service? Think of things from the programmers viewpoint. Programmers like to write code – it is sort of fundamental to their identity, after all. When a programmer (or team) needs to write the support for a new or modified business need, SOA offers a library of services already written and more importantly proven. The whole point of reuse is to avoid developing something fresh, but instead reusing something already written.

I hope this helps to clarify rather than confuse. Although from the corporate point of view reuse might indeed just be using a service for multiple purposes, from the individual programmer or team perspective it is indeed reuse as opposed to build.

Steve