Service component architecture

Encyclopedia : S : SE : SER : Service component architecture

Service Component Architecture (SCA) is a relatively new but important initiative advocated by major vendors of Java EE technology. Its proponents claim it is more natively suited for the delivery of applications that conform with the principles of service-oriented architecture. As such, SCA components are supposedly more technology agnostic. Sponsoring vendors include a vendor of technology solutions that competes with Java.

Contents

1 Definition
2 Sun not included
3 Further Analysis
4 External links

Definition

The released standard seems to be vague in many aspects but does specify that an application designed with SCA should have the following properties:

Decoupling of service implementation and of service assembly from the details of infrastructure capabilities.
Should be able to work with multitude of languages including C++, Java, COBOL, and PHP as well as XML, BPEL, and XSLT.
Needs to work with various messaging constructs including One-Way, Asynchronous, Call-Return, and Notification.
Infrastructure capabilities, such as Security, Transactions and the use of Reliable Messaging should be applied to code through metadata.
Data should be represented in Service data objects.
Components designed in SCA should be easily reused.
Local calls to services should be more tightly coupled, reducing the overhead of creating and parsing messages intended for transport over a network.

Sun not included

A major omission in the list of vendors is Sun.

Further Analysis

Gartner Group has published a short brief that concluded that the SCA included technology of Service Data Object (SDO) will enjoy more rapid adoption due to its maturity [link].

Advantage:

caters for all existing Java platform technologies
less technology dependence - does not have to rely on the Java programming language, nor XML

Disadvantage:

lack of initial support by Microsoft reduces the relevancy of SCA for a large number of potential clients.
Specification does not address performance of SOA applications which continues to be a detractor of adoption.

SCA is said to provide interoperability through an approach called "Activation". It is the method that provides the highest degree of component autonomy, compared to older "mediation" (e.g. JBI) or "Invocation" method used in JCA, as explained by an architect at SAP [link].

External links

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.