If you do web developement, you've probably noticed that "distributed systems" and "service oriented architecture" are really hot topics right now. I have a surprise for you, though: you already work on a distributed system with a service oriented architecture, because every webapp is one. That means you've already decided how your distributed system is going to work, and chances are good you didn't even know you were making those decisions.

This talk will uncover the hidden decisions that shape web applications, including how the org chart limits service architecture, and how consistency and availability by default seems great until it's 3am and the data store needs to be rebuilt by hand to bring the site back up. Once the decisions aren't hidden anymore, I'll explain some other options, and why you might want to pick them to save yourself pain in