SOA does have pictures

If you register for CDBI ( recommended if you are in this field) you can see some SOA pictures:Communicating SOA:

"We noted a recent ITWorld article by Sean McGrath that suggested that there are no commonly accepted pictures that represent SOA. He said, 'When I think of entity/relationship modeling I see pictures. When I think of data flow diagramming I see pictures. When I think of Jackson Systems Design I see pictures. And so on it goes through network databases to relational modeling to distributed objects. Until we arrive at some of today's buzzwords du jour. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)'.

He went on to say, 'Without a good set of pictures, SOA might as well stand for Some Other Architecture. On today's pictorial evidence, perhaps it does.'

Well that's very strange. Hopefully CBDI subscribers will think differently because we have made hundreds of images available from our presentation and workshops.

Strangely enough CBDI had been discussing precisely this point recently and we had already set ourselves the task of coming up with just 6 diagrams that depict SOA. In the end we decided upon 11. This suggested set doesn't try to be comprehensive. Rather it attempts to communicate the basic concepts. If you like them we encourage you to use these images to communicate and explain the concepts to others. All we ask is please ensure that CBDI is attributed."

Of course the view in an earlier post about requiring more definite artefacts is still true. I'm interested in diagrams with precise semantics - too often the architecture/golfers diagrams make people feel safe, but say very little.