Blog: Dan E. Linstedt

« Who's DATA is it anyway? Or should I say, Information? | Main | Data Modeling is vital to successful Business practices »

Is this the ULTIMATE SOA Payback application?

Ok, I just finished blogging a rant - sorry guys, but it had to be said. In that blog (posted here) I suggest that maybe I should build my own data warehouse on myself, well that would require 1) rights to access my own information, 2) free rights to access it any time I wanted, from anywhere I wanted.

Sounds like an SOA to me. So let's open the soap-box a little further shall we?

Here we go.... So you want an SOA? Cool, these are extremely good things to implement in the Enterprise Architecture, and don't get me wrong - I really do believe that SOA is a new step in the right direction (for utilizing, and conglomerating resources and driving up ROI).

So let's examine a real-world business need, my need to access my information at any time from anywhere on the web, and download with full security and authenticity any information said, collected, or written down on me. This is a pipe dream, I know - but follow me.

If ever there is an ultimate ROI, it might be to invest in myself. I could learn a lot about the way I'm perceived in public and by these companies that capture all this information, RANT-ON: after all, I helped create the information they captured, right? RANT-OFF.

So what's an SOA got to do with it?
Suppose I want to build my own personal data warehouse, on myself, for myself, and capture all that I can from the structured and unstructured world (don't worry, the government is already thinking about this for us - scary thought). If for nothing else, but to hold the insurance companies, medical companies, credit companies, and possibly banks accountable for ALL interactions they have with me.

After the warehouse is built, it would not be enough for me to record my thoughts, my ideas, my notions of a two way conversation with Company A. I would need some manner in which to "request" the information they collected from me, and then assuming they were required by law to first: verify that I am me, and then provide the information to me over a web-service.

I would then have to implement an SOA, and schedule the on-demand services from my perspective to contact their gateway and request a log of the information just captured. Maybe my process would even introduce a manual step for THEM, like: you are required to call me in 10 minutes to let me know if you received my fax or not. Maybe within 10 minutes I start the service up again, and look for an annotation in their logs that says they got it, or they didn't. RANT-ON: What ever happened to personal accountability? RANT-OFF.

Now, fast-forward: A couple years pass, I've managed to collect all this information over the SOA, and somehow miraculously I've built this cool dashboard on the world’s perception of "DAN" today, wouldn't that be the ultimate payoff? I could look at my dashboard indicator, and if it's in the red - decide to go play golf for the day, or sit down and deal with the issues that might put me back into the green.

Of course, then I'd spend all my time fighting with vendors over who's data is right, and who's is wrong - but if I have an SOA in place, I could easily correct it - write it back over the SOA, and move on. After all, the customer is always right - right?

Now for the ULTIMATE PAYOFF: at or near the end of my life, I package up all this information and offer it to the highest bidder. Why? To pay for my grand-kids to go through college.

On second thought, this is way to scary. But I wonder - if businesses are PAYING each other to share information about me over SOA, and it may be incorrect, why then do I have to go to court to get it fixed? Why can't I get the information for free?

I'll get back to business on SOA's shortly, they are wondrous things - but compliance, privacy and information access are only going to get harder as we go, not easier.

See you next time,
Dan Linstedt

Share: