Perhaps it's the time of year, but vendor SOA claims, when read together, remind me of a traditional Christmas get-together with a dysfunctional family that's the polar opposite of The Waltons. Members of this extended SOA clan don't mingle much during the year, but when they do get together they each try to outdo each other boasting how they've been most active making the SOA name successful.

According to Grandpa Zeb Wiki, who everybody believes (and vice versa), there are eight SOA guiding family principles. These are encapsulation, loose coupling, contract, abstraction, reusability, composability, autonomy, optimization and discoverability. Like company value statements, these principles are widely admired and instantly forgotten by its members. As children are wont to do, each of the kids has his own take on what's most important in SOA, and family principles be damned.

Like all family members, they do have their similarities. To get to the SOA gathering, everyone agrees the first requirement is essential, which is to engage the company chauffeur who they call their business driver.

The oldest, IBM-Boy, thinks there are only five important aspects: model, assemble, deploy, manage and governance. IBM-Boy's deploy includes transport, event and mediation services, which would be fantastic if I was deploying a national conference on family law. For Christmas, IBM-Boy has a brand new SOA sandbox to play in, which he's happy to share with others. IBM-Boy boasts an SOA Industry Accelerator, which sounds like it's going to obsolete company marketing and sales strategies as a means of promoting business. I can just press down on the Industry Accelerator pedal and the money should roll in.

The second born is the wise one of the family (they usually are) fittingly called Mary Ellen Oracle. She differs a little from her big brother's SOA views, preferring to just build, deploy, and manage. Mostly she just talks about furniture, rearranging the components of her suite.

Jason-Mike Rosoft left his Christmas planning to the last minute, and has only recently been spruiking his new SOA plans. Apparently, he's moving to Oslo, which he says will be fantastic in the long run, but didn't say when this journey would eventuate. The rest of the family somewhat rudely suggested the name Oslo was chosen because it was so far away.

The next sibling, SOA Erin Software (who put her family name first for added recognition), is nothing if not inventive. Not three steps like Oracle, nor five steps like IBM, she's created seven steps called expose, register, secure, manage, visualize, govern and integrate. To me, this sounds like the lifecycle of porn sites - which cater for a quite different orientation.

Jim-Bob Tibco, or little Tibby as the others call him, was always the conciliatory one. He keeps trying to integrate with the other kids, to get everyone talking under the one roof - his. He identified a requirements communication gap, which he manages by continually talking in the hope he can personally bridge the gap. His message of leave, layer and leverage seems to perfectly describe the approach for serving Christmas cake.