WOA

I just got done reading my latest copy of Information Week magazine. There was an article in there by Roger Smith entitled "Smart Web App Development". It explained the rising popularity of a Web Oriented Architecture (WOA). This was a new term for me. So I read the article carefully. I am glad I recently trained in XML so I could follow some of the topics involved.

WOA is an approach to system design. From what I gather it is based upon Representational State Transfer (REST). REST is a simple data transfer technique over HTTP without using complex wrappers like SOAP. Resources are accessed through URIs. It purports to have better response times, lesser server load, and less client code.

WOA is a lighter form of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA is more complex and expensive to develop. It requires you to sends XML messages wrapped in SOAP envelopes. I have blogged about SOA in the past so I will not repeat all the details.

The Information Week article stated that many companies such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Mozilla are going to the simpler WOA approach. The article also admitted that a WOA might not be best for enterprise level computing. In fact it portrays WOA as a complimentary technology to SOA. For now I think I will be more into Service Oriented Architecture since I just learned a lot about XML.