Hi Jim,

You wrote:

I think the answer is the architects "It depends".  If you can tell me what
you personally have defined Service Oriented Architecture to mean, and then
do the same with Event-Driven, perhaps I can spot the differences.  I don't
want to sound trite, so appologies if this sounds like a cop-out.  My point
is that "service oriented" is one of those Gartneresque terms that doesn't
mean anything right now, and Event-Driven was one of the long-ago
Gartnerisms that resulted in a number of different meanings.

In general, however if you consider event driven as being something you can
rely on, a-la tibco et. al, that helps you manage distributed components
over a wide area, then there are aspects in the SO writings that touch in
these areas.  I heard someone the other day wondering whether the end-game
for the SO technology stacks was to commoditize TIB - so I know I'm  not
the only one who sees the parallels.

In the end, architecture turns out to be a life's learning process as
applied to software structure.  I hesitate to recommend any specific
"reference" architectures at my advanced age since there is a different
architect somewhere with an as-good approach/solution to a set of problems.

I hope this helps - I know it wasn't the clear answer you seek.  

Dan Rogers
Microsoft Corporation