Tuesday, August 19, 2008

REST vs WS-* :: A comparison of SOA stacks




source: service-orientated-architecture wiki / SOA Stack


Technology Camps; Hated them before, hate them now and probably will hate them in the future.

But it's always nice to see a nice comparison, especially in a graphical form, to get a perspective. I have always groomed myself as a consultant than a code jockey and therefore I would say, use the correct stack, that solves the business problem at hand with acceptable efficiency within the available time frame.

In my experience, there's no glory in recommending your 'pet technology stack' to a client if it makes the solution unnecessarily complex and a nightmare to maintain. Just as your client will not appreciate you trying to push Free Software (as in beer or freedom) when budget really isn't a constraint, they won't praise your excellent architectural masterpiece, which executes every single line of code in a unit test when you can't deliver it in time for the business to gain a competitive advantage.

That's probably why one of the leading Apparel Manufacturers I know, that supplies to some of the leading brands in the world, still uses a supply chain management system based on MS Access Forms (yes, you read correct and I know the guy who wrote it).

Note: Here at WSO2 we try to incorporate both deciplines in our products whenever we can, although it appears as we are on the WS-* camp.