Last week, SCDigest technology Editor Mark Fralick wrote a column about the confusion being created in the market place by many supply chain software vendors regarding Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). (See SOA It Isn't So. . .). InfoWorld blogger Dave Linthicum liked Fralick’s tongue-in-cheek scorecard for evaluating SOA claims by supply chain software vendors.

Linthicum summarized Fralick’s column, then offered his own mock scorecard:

1. If they say "agility" and/or "reuse" more than 100 times in the first 10 minutes take away 10 points for being too "hype-y."
2. If they can't tell you how their product works and plays with other products, that's a 10 point deduction as well.
3. If they promote a standard that's only in draft, that they wrote, as the savior of SOA, that's a 20 point deduction for being naive.
4. If they give you a mug, add 5 points.
5. If they can tell you in detail how to leverage their product, including a step by step guide to implementation, add 50 points.
6. If they admit limitations to their product up front, so you don't have to guess, give them 30 points for honesty.

(See Rank Your SOA Vendor.) We like Linthicum’s list too, but would have voted for deducting points for the offering of a coffee mug. We suspect this is a sign the SOA cup of the vendor is less than full.