Examining the Pieces of the Service Puzzle

Last week, I promised to explore the difference between architectures and service-oriented architectures. Here's the kicker: There isn't a difference. Or there's a world of difference. It gets down to semantics.

There isn't a difference if you agree (as I argued last week) that a software architecture is, by definition, always designed to exist in the context of the total built environment-that is, the business environment. When every custom application is designed to this simple yet profound standard, then every application should, by definition, be a puzzle piece that fits perfectly into the total business application puzzle.

Things get more interesting when the business application puzzle includes customers, partners, suppliers, technology vendors and others (the tax man, anyone?). It's a practical notion today, given the availability of a global Internet and low-cost broadband.

There's a world of difference, however, when businesses don't agree on what constitutes a puzzle piece; that is, how large or small each puzzle piece should be, and the technical mechanism by which these puzzle pieces should communicate. In other words, what is a service? The answer is ... it depends!

Consider the following:

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