SAPPHIRE '06: It Takes a Community To Raise Web Services (AMR)

Like object-oriented design before it, the hardest part of web services is figuring out exactly what the services should be, what data is required, and how granular to make them. Experience with service-oriented architecture (SOA) custom development shows that groups often go through several rounds of defining and redefining services before they get it right.

Enterprise software vendors like SAP and Oracle have a tougher problem. Once they define services to be delivered by their ERP suites, they have tens of thousands of customers that will expect the services to be supported forever. Both companies are understandably nervous about rushing the process and creating a support nightmare.

The worst mistake any vendor could make is to let its developers define the services in a vacuum. Most customers would agree that development organizations often have an incomplete data-centric view of how people actually use the products and how they fit into business processes.