The backlash on SOA

I received my November 15, 2004 issue of Software Development Times yesterday. The trade magazine is OK in general and I usually quickly browse through it with the thought of maybe finding a hidden gem about a product released or new idea. What caught my eye this time was an editorial that tried to paint a slightly negative picture of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). Now SOA will not solve all architectural issues and should not be applied for all solutions. The reason I view it as a truly unique way to architect and develop software is for Presentation Layer independence. The project I am currently working on initially will be a ASP.NET web application. But the government office would like to be able to interface to the data from wireless handhelds. There is also a need to allow state and other federal agencies to interface to the data. SOA allows us to build a flexible non-proprietary method to allow these outside entities to get data and use it. We knew that we would have to build some web services for the system so why not just build the system with SOA? I base my view on the demo application from Microsoft called TaskVision (which I use to track tasks at home) and from read and discussing extensively about SOA for the last year. I know that web services are not the fastest way to get/put data into a database but our system is being built to be highly flexible now and in the future. I see SOA filling in a gap that has always been an issue when building a system that will have to be accessed from a known foreign system now and in the future. I will link to the editorial when it becomes available.