Web-Oriented Architecture

I first became interested in
WOA after watching
this QCon presentation by Dr. Jim Webber and Martin Fowler
of ThoughtWorks fame. Since that initial exposure, I have continued
to read web articles and blog posts in an effort to learn more about
this approach.

WOA uses the same basic architecture concepts while replacing
technologies like SOAP and
ESBs with
REST. In
other words, take the architecture guidance from SOA, take out the
complex, expensive proprietary technologies and replace them with open,
standard, web-based technology like
HTTP and
POX. Instead of having a
complicated ESB or
EAI
package sitting in the middle of your services directing traffic, you
instead use standard HTTP verbs like GET, POST and friends to send
messages to various services. It is so simple it is brilliant. The down
side to this approach currently, is that there is little to no tools
support out there today to assist developers with this approach. On the
other hand, that also means that there are opportunities out there for
somebody to put together some tooling around these concepts.

The more I learn about WOA, the more I am convinced that this is the
future of integration. My next step will be to try and build a
non-trivial demo system using this approach. I will try and post here
about my experience.

A couple of good starter articles in addition to the video above include
What Is WOA? It’s The Future of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
and Unboxing Web-Oriented Architecture: The 6 Aspects Of An Emergent Architectural Style from Dion Hinchcliffe’s Blog.