If you’re an SOA advocate in your organization, what would you like to find in your stocking this year for the holidays? Here’s a wish list that would warm the hearts of SOA proponents across the land:

1) A holiday miracle: Anne Thomas Manes announces that SOA has come back to life. It’s been a tough year right from the get-go. Anne started off New Year’s Day (or a couple of days after) with her proclamation that SOA is Dead, and had everyone all upset and crying and stuff for the rest of the year.  Okay, Anne, pressure’s on — everyone is awaiting your first post-New Year’s blog post of 2010!

2) A certificate of appreciation from the business folks. We’re doing this all for you!  But you don’t even know we’re alive! Maybe a nice little certificate, acknowledging all our hard work designing and reusing services. Or, we wouldn’t object to a wee little bonus of a few thousand bucks for all that aligning we’ve been doing with you over the past year. Michael Poulin, you think we’ve been doing a good job, right? Don’t you?

3) A subscription to Architectural Digest. Not the building kind of architecture, but you know, the enterprise kind. Good architecture is the key to success in SOA projects large and small. At least that’s what Dave Linthicum and Brenda Michelson keep telling us!

4) A cloud machine. Hey, we’ve been making clouds for years now, long before they became fashionable. Maybe it’s time to really make an impression! Maybe Phil Wainewright could even show us how to set it up.

5) More REST. We’ve been working our butts off all year designing all these complex SOAP and WS-* services — we need a break!  

6) Peace and good will: If not available, we’ll take peace and IT-business alignment.Or at least a good discussion about IT-business alignment. Or maybe a thousand more discussions about IT-business alignment.

7) An iPhone:  Nothing really to do with our SOA work, it just would be a cool gift.