Mrs. Minniver

I'm working on an "Introduction to SOA and ESB" presentation (for a workshop I'm going to have to teach), and I started thinking about the relationship of Web Services, ESB and SOA to one another. (I had noticed that often people struggled to form this relationship picture in their mind ... asking questions like, "Is Web Services the same thing as SOA?"

Being the geek I am, my mind raced back to high schoole "set theory" and I started scribbling out a "Venn Diagram". I came up with this:



Click here for larger picture.

Note 1: I disclaim the you-know-what out of this thing ... I'm not trying to state this is 100% definitive. But I do think it's helpful in getting people to see that the different terms have some overlap and some isolation. At least I hope it's helpful ... I may get blank stares. :-)

Note 2: Can Web Services and ESB intersect? Maybe ... Web Services can certainly use the ESB, but whether it's proper to represent that as a union of A and B is open to some debate.

Anyway, I naturally went to Wikipedia to see if I got "Venn Diagram" correct in my mind and sure enough there was a nice article on the subject. And down at the bottom was an intriguing reference to "Mrs. Minniver's Problem," which can be found here. It's a mathematical problem.

I never cease to be amazed at the way Wikipedia seems to have so many fascinating articles about so many arcane things.