You may have missed the 30 November announcement about service component architecture (SCA) or perhaps you've read all the press releases but you're still trying to figure out what it is and whether or not you should care. Since I've been noodling on this for awhile, I hope I can shed some light on the subject.

Several leading software vendors -- including BEA, IBM, IONA, Oracle, SAP, Siebel, Sybase, and Xcalia -- have worked together to make implementing SOA easier (on Java at least). To quote from the press release: