Don pointed
out
to Goran that the Indigo definition of “a service is simply a program
that one interacts with via message exchanges.” Goran pointed
out
that that definition “really doesn’t highlight how it’ll help a
customer”. I think part of the reason they are both right is that they
are talking about different things. I would say Don is talking about
Service Oriented Programming where Goran is talking about Service
Oriented Architecture. This gets back to the levels of architecture that
I blogged
about.
Platform tools like Indigo are components used in systems. I’m guessing
the customer’s Goran mentioned are at the system-of-system level for
whom the messaging plumbing is below the abstraction level they care
about.
Of course, SO* buzzwords are thrown about with such frequency these
days it’s hard to keep track of the difference.