Describing a reference model for SOA...

I got an email from Nichole last week about a talk that she was going to give on the OASIS Reference Model for SOA this Wednesday (tommorow) on the Microsoft campus.

See: https://www.iasahome.org/iasaweb/appmanager/home/chapterdetail?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=chapterdetail_meetings&chapterdetail_meeting_portletid=15401&chapterdetail_meeting_portletchannel=3216

As this was the first time that I had heard of the reference model, I decided to read through it. Fortunately, I found nothing too surprising or new. The following comment, however, made me really think:

...the terms "loose couplising" and "coarse-grained" are commonly applied as SOA concepts, but these terms have intentionally not been used in the current discussion because they are subjective trade-offs and without useful metrics. In terms of needs and capabilities, granularity and coarseness are usually relative to detail for the level of the problem being addressed, e.g. one that is more strategic vs. one down to the algorithm level, and defining the optimum level is not amenable to counting the number of interfaces or the number of types of information excanges connected to an interface ...

Initially, I was suprised that "loose coupling" and "coarse-grained" were not part of the reference model. After rereading the paragraph and giving it some thought, I have come to agree with the RM. What are your thoughts?

See the following link for more information: https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=soa-rm

Ali