Android as mobile SOA: consider the possibilities

"Android guy" Sam Herren points out that the applications that run or will run on Android are interoperable in a service-oriented way. "I would like to position Android’s client interface with Calendar, Contacts, and Gmail as mobile SOA," he says.

Applications such as Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, and Google Voice "are separate and have separate UIs, but they share common data that lives on the phone and simultaneously in the Google cloud," Herren observes. "Android was built as a mobile deliverer of Google’s main services so instead of being layers of apps above the OS they are tightly integrated."

Hmm. Based on this line of thinking, you could look at iPhone as a mobile SOA device as well. And, as previously surfaced here at this blogsite, there's a strong analogy that can be made between SOA and the way iTunes is structured. Or, MP3 for that matter. Along with the big honking enterprise SOAs we focus on, we're also surrounded by lots of mini-SOAs.