Service Category – The world of Confusion
by Murteza Salemi, Shubhankar Sumar
Coming up with service categories seems at first an easy task but when you start thinking about it and discuss it with other architects, you will be dazzled on how many different definitions exist out there. It is not a matter of which one is right and which one is wrong but how we are going to agree on one set of definitions and terminology so we can talk with each other and using the same words (terminology) without having different meaning (unambiguous) for them.
The best approach is that every organisation or business unit identifies and agrees on a glossary of these terminologies and definitions right at the beginning of SOA journey. On the agreed category, create guidelines and characteristics for each category for ready reference. The same is communicated and mandated by the SOA governance team within all the SOA programme within the organisation.
There are quite a few in the list. Here are some examples of service categories:
- Business Services
- Capability Services
- Activity Services
- Information Services/Data Services
- Entity Services
- Application Services
- Presentation Services
- Composite Services
- Technical / Infrastructure Services
- Technology Services
- Utility Services
- Communication Services
- Integration Services
- Bus Services
- Process Services
- Master data services
Remember – you have to get this fixed right at the beginning of the SOA journey. It looks very trivial things but not having the right set of category defined will have long lasting negative impact and creates confusion within the architecture and business community.
Lets go and finalise the Service Category if you have not done so.
