The session “Open Standards for SOA and Java Technology” was a panel discussion about Service Component Architecture (SCA). The moderator was David Chappell of Chappell & Associates. The panel included Michael Rowley of BEA, Steve Jones of Capgemini UK, Mike Edwards of IBM, David Chappell of Oracle (not the same person as the moderator, and neither of the David Chappell’s were the comedian of the same name), Mark Little of Redhat, Patrick Leonard of Rogue Wave, Sanjay Patil of SAP, Peter Walker of SUN, and Scott Vorthmann of Tibco.

Why is SCA useful?

SCA makes you think SOA. It helps with team organization, and it makes it easier to deliver SOA apps. When a team thinks SOA, they have a better clarity of communication.

What SCA products exist?

There are about five vendors in the market offering free open source solutions including Apache Tuscany and Fabric 3. There are commercial SCA products available from every vendor represented on the panel.

Why does the SCA specification overlap with Java EE 5?

SCA is not trying to compete with Java EE. Java EE is about a pure Java solution. SCA strives to allow deployment of components in an language neutral fashion.

What is open source’s role in SCA?

The open source community helps to promote technology saturation through its community of users. The open source reference implementations become the test beds for the API specifications.

Now that SUN is not in control of Java anymore, is there a fear that fragmentation will benefit Microsoft?

Many companies, including Microsoft, are combining heterogeneous technologies for their SOA solutions. With Microsoft, you get what Microsoft wants you to have (”Plato’s benevolent dictator”). In the Java world everyone is capable of contributing to the specification through the JSR process.

Are JBI and SCA competitors?

JBI sits at a lower level than SCA, handling more of the communication and protocol layer. There is some overlap, but SCA works well inside of a JBI container.

What are the best practices for doing SCA?

Define services first! SCA is an architectural and operational tool. You ultimately need to code the solution, but thinking about it first is the most important thing.