...but what kind of animal is a Service Data Object? Seriously - like Don says, "Get over your OO obsession."
IONA are losing the plot.
http://jagraham.blogspot.com/2005/12/scarred-for-life-day-in-life-of-oo.html
Boiling it down? An easier model to work with XML than DOM or JAXB.
Technology to benefit tool developers. "All you have to do is right click on the context menu and your SDOs are generated for you! It's that easy! Show me your budget and we'll nail down a price."
I have to agree with Greg. Get over the "object" word as being bad no matter where it's used ;-) If you s/object/entity/g on the papers then it's fine.
Mark, I think its more a name-association problem (this is why I still maintain a morbid interest in semiotics): the interesting thing is that the main beef that OO folks have with SDO is that they "aren't objects", ie, they don't allow for domain specific behavior or business logic.