Eclipse gets Fishy on SOA

Hype hangover

By Phil Manchester • Get more from this author

Posted in Applications, 7th January 2008 18:42 GMT

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The Eclipse Foundation's plan to push ahead with a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) run-time framework later this year marks an interesting change of direction for the industry group.

The Swordfish project, announced last summer, has now reached level of maturity where it can be evaluated and its significance assessed.

Swordfish aims to bring together existing standards such as OSGi, SOAP and JBI to create a common platform for SOA projects. The original proposal argues that the plethora of proprietary approaches to SOA have been counter productive and held back the spread of SOA.

But as JBoss' chief technology officer and vice president of engineering Sacha Labourey notes in his blog the move into run times is a significant shift for an organization that was originally set up to create a common platform for development tools.

It could of course be that some Eclipse Foundation members are disappointed with the slow progress of SOA and are keen to find ways to help the cause, having invested so much in championing SOA. Last month Oracle chief Larry Ellison acknowledged that SOA take up was slow.

Others in the SOA space are also concerned. SOA consultant ZapThink, for example, is less optimistic about SOA take up than a year ago. Its 2008 forecast factors in the possibility of an economic downturn and further slowdown in SOA adoption.®

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