Dan Sholler

I have recently been inundated with questions about the design of message formats. While these questions vary from techniques for XML extensibility to issues about how to create common elements for messaging standards. Underlying all of these questions is a basic challenge: Creating a common set of shared services requires a common information model.  We all have been challenged to create common information for many years, but because SOA is a centralizing concept (consolidating application specific functions into shared services) it creates more demand for sorting out the information model. The process of deciding how to structure common messages is very complicated, and tied up with all sorts of other design decisions about how services are structured, etc.

If anyone has good or bad experiences with this process of creating common message formats for SOA, please let me know, I would love to hear from you.

Also, if anyone is using industry standards as part of their message formats, I would love to talk to you as well.