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ECM: Document-centric SOA
SOA is tool for knitting together processes into something that is much more solid that the sum of its components. SOA services often expose data stored in structured data repositories like relational databases. But SOA can also unite unstructured data and documents with enterprise processes and structured data. Jake Sorofman described how unstructured data is playing an increasingly important part in SOA implementations.
Structured data is often managed and stored in ECM systems, file systems, or stored on local hard disks. A frequent estimate is that 80 percent of a company’s data is unstructured. Unstructured data often consists of images, drawings, manuals, reports, and spreadsheets. Being able to reliably get at the data and information stored in unstructured data is hard. Technologies like XML are beginning to pave a middle road between totally unstructured data and the very rigid table structures of databases. XML separates content from form and lets Web documents define their own information structures.
Sorofman summarized a vision for how documents will become increasingly important for SOA:
“SOA’s next act must accommodate documents, making them not only a key information source, but also a new application context. Documents contain key information that must be accessible across the enterprise. But looking at documents simply as a target source is missing half the story. Documents provide the persistence and rich context many business applications count on — persistence and context that is completely lost in a traditional portal-style ‘on-the-glass’ user experience.”
