John Reynolds's Blog

Paving cow paths - Service Component Architecture plans to smooth out the bumps

Unfortunately, "No part of the document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission..." so I can't quote the document, but I can hopefully paraphrase its goals without getting into trouble:

• Simplify business component development
• Simplfy the assembly and deployment of business solutions built as networks of services
• Shield business logic from middleware details and low-level changes
• Improve the testability of business services

These goals are particularly attractive to those who have had some misgivings about Java's suitability for business programming.

SCA builds on and embraces Spring, BPEL, Web Services, EJB3, REST, etc. in an attempt to create de-facto standards for assembling diverse components into composite applications using little or no bridging code. In that sense, SCA is paving cow paths rather than breaking any new ground. I find that refreshing.

It is way too early to judge SCA's success, but it could turn out to be a very good thing if they can pull it off.

Comments

• What about Jini? Didn't they solve all those problems ages ago?

  Posted by: rickcarson on December 05, 2005 at 03:06 AM

• SCA is a solution for heterogenous environments (incorporating legacy applications). My impression is that Jini is for homogenous environments... not realistic for most businesses. Please correct me if I am wrong about Jini.

  --JohnR

  Posted by: johnreynolds on December 05, 2005 at 03:54 AM

• 
  Unfortunately, "No part of the document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission..."

  Sure you can, it's called fair use. You just can't quote the entire thing.

  You could easily quote notably bits from the intro, or, perhaps, notable findings from the conclusion.
  

  Posted by: whartung on December 05, 2005 at 02:40 PM

• Yes, Jini did solve this problem a long time ago. For plugging non-Java stuff into a Javaspace, JCA is probably the best tool to use. There's also a specific library by Codemesh for plugging C++ directly into a Javaspace.

  Posted by: wpbarr on January 24, 2006 at 10:31 AM

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