SOA 2.0 all over again?

Over two years ago I got frustrated at the announcement of SOA 2.0. Many others were likewise confused and irritated at an attempt to create another hype curve. I'm not going to attribute cause and effect because maybe it would have happened anyway, but SOA 2.0 pretty much bit the dirt subsequently. Well while writing up this article for InfoQ I had a serious case of deja vu.

WTF is WOA? Where did it spring from and more precisely where has it been hiding for the past ten years? At its best it seems to be the same as ROA, i.e., a concrete implementation of REST targeting the Web. (I'm not so keen on ROA either: I prefer REST/HTTP.) At its worst it's an excuse to start generating more terms ('Web-oriented SOA'?! You've got to be joking!) One of the original articles on Web Oriented Architecture (aka WOA) was posted by Dion on April 1st, so maybe that was a Freudian Slip on his part?

But if WOA is not the same as REST (or REST as applied to the Web) then it really needs a different acronym: REST is fundamentally the architecture on which the Web is based and everyone understands that now. Alright you do need to clarify how the concepts are implemented (HTTP, JMS etc.), but that's easy to do without coining a whole new terminology. Independently of Roy's thesis, the W3C has done a good job of defining the Web Architecture. Plus, people have been building RESTful good citizen applications for quite a while. Did they need to coin a new term to make it clear what was happening under the hood? I think not. But then again, maybe the intent is to try to outwit us with an attempt at the Chewbacca Defense? I think it's more a case of The Emperor's New Clothes syndrome and we should just say that WOA is naked and move on!

Look guys, we have REST as a well defined and accepted term. Why do we need yet another acronym to mean the same thing? The answer is that we don't, so let's stop polluting the atmosphere with meaningless or duplicate terms and get on with helping end users and developers figure out the best way in which to deliver business functions and data! I can say 'REST as applied to the Web' in less time than it takes to explain WOA and I can guarantee you that more people will understand what I mean with the first description than the second.