Wife: I've been thinking...
Me: (Oh no... what now?) Well done! ... Ouch! ...
Wife: That service thingy you told me about the other day... lots of little services all helping each other out...
Me: Service-oriented Architecture. What about it?
Wife: Well, it's a nice idea in principle, but sounds like it would be a nightmare to manage. A bit like a juggler trying to cope with lots of objects in the air, all different shapes and sizes...
Me: That's a really good analogy. Yes, service-oriented architecture needs a juggler. They call it an ESB or enterprise service bus.
Wife (laughing): You men and your three letter acronyms.
Me: It's actually quite a cool concept, a bit like a telephone switchboard. Services are connected in flexible ways via the bus, without being physically connected to each other. The bus looks after the connections, and can reroute calls when connections fail for example.
Wife: Like an automatic switchboard operator.
Me: Yes, exactly! You're fabulous, you know?
Wife: You've only discovered that now?
Me: Er...