James Crawford, VP/Engineering for Composite Software, outlined the challenges and benfits of integrating data services into a service-oriented architecture (SOA), at the SOA Web Services Edge Conference and Exhibition at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York.

Crawford pointed out a basic disconnect between the XML web service format, which is hierarchical, and relational data, which is tabular. "In fact, there's also a lot of information that is not even in tabular format," complicating things further, he noted. He outlined typical problems enterprise IT developers face, such as working SAP BAPIs, for which "you need to learn SAP Speak to call the BAPI. Assuming you work through that you then get the data back in three proprietary structures, none of which are relational or XML," he said.

Crawford said a data services layer in a composite application shold provide access to a comprehensive array of data sources, prebuilt reusable services, graphical tools to customize services, and protection for back-end data sources. "And you need access from the data services layer to a comprehensive array of data services," he added.

Crawford's presentation was streamed live to a worldwide audience via SYS-CON.TV.  The event is colocated with the Enterprise Open Source Conference and Exhibition and the Real-World Ajax Seminar, and is being held June 5-6.