The Challenge of Joining SOA to RIA

SOA or Service Oriented Architecture is always the standard for development in build applications that are geared towards businesses. SOA ensure that the application will work according to the parameters set by businesses.

The application might be simplified but it will work according to the business plan. SOA is geared towards proper business processes and the users of application build with SOA will have to spend some time learning the application so that they would be functional and highly efficient.

This is especially true when dealing with online applications since businesses have to work in real time and they have to work in any given condition. That means they have to use as little bandwidth as possible so that they could survive even with the harshest conditions.

The advantage of SOA is clearly on it service delivery. Users should be able to work with the application towards business advancement. Unfortunately, the application developed through SOA is a little bit difficult to learn. The result is a complicated function that may contribute to the inability of the application to work well with the user. Error is always a possibility.

To solve that problem RIA (Rich Internet Applications) is being pushed in building SOA applications. RIA programming techniques especially Ajax is being seriously considered by businesses and developers since it offers the user interaction without complicating processes. Ajax should help developers build applications that can seamlessly run online and bridge the complicated processes.

But implementing an SOA through RIA is a little bit difficult for most developers. Although RIA could effectively ease the processes of users, RIA is greatly limited by technical requirements for them to work. Although there is clearly an advancement in technology, there are certain aspects wherein RIA could never work as expected.

One of the platforms that have been really difficult for RIA is the mobile platform. Only a limited number of phones have the ability to handle full version of websites and aside from these expensive gadgets, wireless data transfer is still expensive.

Another reason why businesses have opted to stay away from RIA in building SOA is from the fact that RIA such as Ajax does not provide the security currently being implemented in common SOA applications. Ajax, until today, is unfortunately unsecured even though developers have toiled really hard to make it a viable programming technique.

But that does not mean developers cannot do anything. There are two possible ways on how RIA could handle the demands of SOA.

The first solution is to use widgets instead of full fledged applications. Developers could attach the widgets to simple SOA applications. Although it will not change the whole face of the application, it will certainly ease the users interaction with the application.

The other solution is to use on demand applications. The application will only be launched when needed. It has been suggested that this could be triggered through cache so that the RIA could be used as a support when the data overloads or when the user needs to have additional functions.

RIA in SOA is possible but it will take some time before it could be fully implemented with expected performance and security. For now limiting the interaction of RIA in SOA is a good way to slowly introduce RIA in SOA.