When your the Leader, you don’t have to play the same Game!

I remember when I went back to University to get a Diploma in Object Oriented Programming, Microsoft didn't officially condone OOA&D. Rather than come out and officially sanction what was being taught in leading schools they migrated a huge base of developer’s, overtime to the accepted norm. I think in the latest release of VB.net they now support the object oriented principles: polymorphism, inheritance, and encapsulation.

Well one would think that a leader in the industry would have no problem in accepting general principles of some of the leading computer scientists such as the 3 amigo’s, why hasn’t Microsoft followed suit. Because they don’t have to!

Do we chalk this up to plain arrogance or ignorance? Do they think they should not have to get on board with the latest trends or is their approach more subversive? Will they again back into Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) by calling it something other the generally accepted terminology used by the industry?

Yes I believe that will be Microsoft’s approach - to go ahead and provide solutions based on these principles, without really having to acknowledge a higher authority than thou. So expect to see products and solutions about SOA but just don’t expect to see them come right out and say they do SOA. To do that would be sacrilegious.

While the rest of the market is a buzz with trying to position themselves with the latest spin on the word SOA, Microsoft is quietly summoning its band of developers by putting easy to use tools in front of them, even if these developer are completely oblivious to the fact that what they are doing conforms to Service-Oriented Principles. After all - action is stronger than words.

So next time you do a web search on words around SOA don’t expect to see a lot of hits leading to Microsoft because they play by different rules. They of course participate in lot of standards bodies, but don’t put a lot of marketing hype into advertising about SOA.

I think they have been conspicuous by their absence.

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Gary E. Smith
SOA Enterprise Architect