PSOA Part 1

I have a "sub-clinical" case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, better known as OCD (of course this is self-diagnosed). I've had it as far back as I can remember. It was much worse when I was younger. All lines had to be straight; I would starch my clothes until they felt like cardboard; I would shine or clean (with a toothbrush) my shoes on a daily basis. I would even spend extra time on standardized tests erasing my answers because I slightly marked outside of the little circles. I used to think that I outgrew it, but come to find out, it manifests itself in other areas of my life. Perhaps the most glaring area is in my personal technology.

A service oriented architecture (SOA) is a way of thinking/applying loosely coupled technology components (or services) in a way to achieve a cohesive and federated environment that reuses data in such a way as to be consumable by most (if not all) elements of the system. People have different definitions and thoughts on the requirements for an SOA and how to properly implement one. In my opinion, it's a way of getting all of your te

chnology working together in a systematic way to alleviate friction in your processes.

About a year ago, I decided to apply this philosophy to my personal technology. I wanted an environment where heterogenous devices and applications collaborated to provide me with a highly organized and fluid system with the goals of:

1. Redundancy

2. Portability

3. Minimization of swivel chair gaps, and

4. Entertainment

This would include everything from the tools I use at work, to the television I sit in front of at home. Open standards, the introduction of mobile devices such as the iPhone, along with the progress of cloud computing, played key roles in implementing my personal service oriented architecture (PSOA). In a later post, I'll go into detail about how the components work together and the hurdles I'm currently facing with getting all of the pieces to cooperate. Below is a mapping I put together using the web based diagramming app, Gliffy. For some reason I wasn't able to link the image to the larger diagram, so you can view the full size by clicking here.