The first time I saw Ron Jacobs talk about service-oriented architecture was at Microsoft TechEd 2004. He did a talk with John Devados and it was the first time I can remember someone talking about services in a way that made sense to me as a developer as well as an architect. It seemed that every time I went to see a talk on SOA, I was looking at a lot diagrams of clouds with lines connecting them to other clouds. Any questions about the practical application of services was met with the answer, “Well, it depends.” Ron was the first person I ever saw who offered real, prescriptive guidance on how to design and implement properly factored services, and it had a big impact on how I’ve approached SOA ever since.

Beyond being an in-demand conference speaker, Ron is also the creator of ARCast.tv, the show that I and several other architects at Microsoft got the chance to co-host just a little over a year ago when Ron moved-on to become a technical evangelist for the Windows Communication Foundation and Workflow Foundation product teams. Heck, I even had the opportunity to do an interview with Ron back in 2006 at the Microsoft National Architecture Forum in Vale, CO.

In our newest episode of ARCast.tv, Ron gets to sit in the interviewee seat and talk about some of the key differences and benefits of SOAP-based and RESTful services, and how Windows Communication Foundation supports the implementation of both types of services.