I am very happy to see someone talking about data integration in SOA context, which we discussed a lot but have not found good references. Here are the comments from “The top SOA stories of 2007, part 2” with the title: “Don’t forget the data”.

"Many SOA initiatives began with a focus on application development and integration and data has always been the poor relation, and subordinate to applications," Macehiter (research director at Macehiter Ward-Dutton) said.

"We have long been advocating that organizations need to recognize the importance of common data models early in the process. For example, many of the ESB solutions have their origins in EAI and provide capabilities around data transformation within the service layer rather than behind the service interface where it should be."

I do not know why it is important to put the data transformation behind the service. I do think both ESB and EAI do not pay much attention to the importance of enterprise data. Fundamentally, data and processes are the two main enterprise assets, which support the business. From BPM or from SOA point of view, we should not forget the data.

Schmelzer (senior analyst with ZapThink LLC) sees room for optimism when talking about we are lacking information architects:

"On the plus side," he said, "there's a huge movement to focus SOA efforts on not just process, infrastructure, and application-oriented activities, but also on the governance, information and data aspects as well. We hope SOA serves as a great excuse to get EA (Enterprise Architecture) done right once and for all."

Finally, I am more convinced that data integration is the hot topic when found out the news in ZDNet: Data integration demand will grow in 2008.

Lower cost, easier to use, and more flexible data integration tools are beginning to emerge and will meet many of the integration needs in the coming year, replacing custom coding projects.