iWay Service Adapters and the Promise of SOA

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There has been a lot of buzz lately about Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), a new way to integrate information systems using Web services and other open standards. To understand how SOA works, I like to use an analogy from the natural world called "successive levels of aggregation." Complex organisms such as the human body are microcosms of working, independent systems that "roll up" into large-scale collaborative systems. For example, the circulatory system is comprised of many discrete systems – the heart, blood cells, arteries, and so forth – all of which work together to keep the body alive and support other critical processes such as respiration, speech, and movement. So it is with the information systems that run a business. Macro systems – such as the applications responsible for processing purchase orders and cutting pay checks – collaborate with related business applications to produce global systems like Payroll and HR.

Successive levels of aggregation are what simplify these business operations into manageable entities. For example, a discrete business function like approving an invoice is comprised of many lower-level functions – looking up vendor information, matching POs with payments, verifying project completion status, and so forth. These micro systems aggregate into applications that work like the major organs of the body, forming global systems on which the business depends to produce results.

Like the human body, within each level of aggregation, the systems involved function independently. Lower level functions are ubiquitous and exposed to higher-level functions through a common interface. Just as the heart doesn't worry about what the lungs do or how they do it, a Web application, employee portal, or any other application should not be concerned with the workings of related business processes. When you lift an 80-pound sack of concrete and carry it across the yard, the muscles involved "ask" for more oxygen from a service – in this case, the pulmonary-respiratory system. Your biceps don't need to bother with how the lungs absorb oxygen or what causes the heart to beat faster. Similarly, in SOA, when an application needs data from a business function, it simply asks for it – in this case, from a software service.

SOA is a recent development so it is nowhere near as refined as in the human body. However, companies such as iWay Software are creating a new generation of adapters called service adapters that help make the vision of "universal software services" a reality. Unlike yesterday's proprietary adapters, which had to be used with integration brokers to produce results, service adapters provide discrete units of work that can both connect and manipulate complex business functions. These adapters can be exposed through a variety of interfaces, such as JCA, XML, EDI, message queuing, and, of course, SOAP and WSDL.

Within each "micro system" of platforms and applications, service adapters can be deployed and configured using the same tools and techniques across all information resources. These advanced frameworks contain built-in message translation mechanisms that enable information resources to collaborate without worrying about how to communicate or what language to use – so developers don't have to consciously manipulate all the functions necessary to produce business results.