A cross-industry, joint-customer effort at web services group OASIS designed to put some beef into the term Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has hit an early snag.

Some of the biggest names in enterprise computing, companies whose software is expected to provide the underpinnings of SOAs, are dragging their feet on joining a technical committee to establish a basic SOA reference model.

A reference model is vital because the term SOA has come to be used in an increasing number of contexts with different - even conflicting - meanings, according to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards.