While we're all puzzling over how to define SOA let's throw another term into the mix. The term Composite Applications is getting a lot of attention these days. The problem, like SOA, is that there seems to be many differerent opinions on what Composite...

Nathaniel Palmer has a nice (if simplistic) overview article explaining the potential relationships between these specifications. While he glosses over some of the difficulties in mapping BPMN to BPEL, if you're unfamiliar with how these specs might be...

Joe McKendrick has a blog entry about just a bunch of Web Services and SOA. He cites some research from Saugatuck that states "...many companies are merely managing a collection of Web services, and have yet to make a strong commitment to SOA as a management...

Nice features but it seems to be an expensive toy looking for something to do. I’ll buy a smart phone when it can replace my laptop and includes support for a full-size keyboard and monitor. As expected, Cisco is already suing Apple over the name iPhone...

Microsoft believes that software empowers individuals to accomplish difficult tasks. Our approach towards educating our partners and customers on SOA reflects this belief. For this reason the bulk of our resources are designed to be actionable instead...

The second public review for BPEL started Sunday (January 7, 2007), and ends January 22, 2007. The spec was previously submitted for a 60-day public review on September 9, 2006 ; this 15-day review is limited in scope to changes made from the previous...

Having trouble justifying SOA? No problem. Just buy a template and you're off and running. The mind boggles.

From the Java Developer's Journal. I guess I should feel guilty for appearing in JDJ now that I work for Microsoft. Nah - Sys-Con is a great bunch of guys (I got to know many of them when I was editor of XML Journal ). Thanks Jeremy !

Get it now on e-Bay before its gone! Hat tip to Annie Shum for finding this..

I spoke at the CMG 2006 conference in Reno last week (I gave a presentation on SOA and appeared on a SOA panel). While at the conference I was confronted by a BPM-type who had lots of questions about BPEL. After some discussion I finally got the guy to...

If you haven't seen this yet I encourage you to take a look . We're currently featuring: A free book on SOA Patterns and Anti-Patterns A detailed architectural case study A presentation on implementing an ESB on the Microsoft platform And much, much more...

E.F. Schumacher, a well-known British economist, once wrote: "I cannot predict the wind but I can have my sail ready". With that thought in mind here are ten predictions and hopes to help get your sails ready for 2007: 1. The WS-BPEL 2.0 specification...

MomentumSI has an interesting list of SOA-related companies that have been acquired over the last few years. The list seems to be missing a few and categorizes some companies as "SOA centric" when they've actually been around for a much longer timeframe...

Its a sunny day here in Costa Mesa and the WS-BPEL TC is wrapping up what should be our last F2F meeting prior to standardization. Its been a long journey here from our initial meeting back in May 2003 . The TC completed addressing the comments received...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=10CC340B-F857-4A14-83F5-25634C3BF043&displaylang=en

Interesting take on this topic from Keith Harrison-Broninski over at BP Trends (PDF download). This is the fourth part of an ongoing series on the future of BPM. You can find the earlier entries in the series here . Keith asserts that BPMN will make...

Quick funny: Check out the SOA Facts site. I wasn't aware that SOA was the one thing that Chuck Norris can't kill.

WS-BPEL is very much a subset of what can be represented using WF. Think of WF as a "graph of activities" that can be transformed to virtually any workflow standard. I'll try to post a similar comparison between WS-BPEL 2.0 and XPDL 2.0 later this week...

If you haven't heard about this already, you owe it to yourself to check this out . The most exciting part of the announcement (imho): Web Services for managing physical and virtual servers : Microsoft and Novell will undertake work to make it...

Here's a quick reminder that the last call for comments on the WS-BPEL 2.0 spec is rapidaly approaching (November 9th). The WS-BPEL 2.0 spec it is available in PDF , DOC and XHTML formats. A RDDL document is also available that includes links to all...

An Office Business Application Reference Architecture Pack (RAP) for Supply Chain is now available on the OBA RAP page . The RAP for Supply Chain is a working example of an Office Business Application (OBA) built using the 2007 Office System. ...

Every year, IDEAlliance awards the XML Cup to one or more people who have made a major contribution to XML. I've seen Jean Paoli's and its quite an impressive award. In a recent call for nominations I suggested Charles Goldfarb, Ed Mosher and Ray Lorie...

Here is my keynote (PPT format) for the SOA Track at the Microsoft BPM and SOA Conference . Here is the abstract for session: Many analysts and industry pundits have confused the concept of Service Oriented Architecture with Service Oriented...

David Linthicum is still trying to stir up some arguments about BPEL . This is the second week in a row - he's even included a video of a fight from a hockey game. Happily I haven't seen any fist fights break out over orchestration languages (at least...