Service-oriented architecture
Definitions
SOA is an architectural style whose goal is to achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents. A service is a unit of work done by a service provider to achieve desired end results for a service consumer. Both provider and consumer are roles played by software agents on behalf of their owners. ([Hao He, retrieved 10:14, 24 April 2007 (MEST)).
Service orientation is a means for integrating across diverse systems. Each IT resource, whether an application, system, or trading partner, can be accessed as a service. These capabilities are available through interfaces; Service orientation uses standard protocols and conventional interfaces - usually Web services - to facilitate access to business logic and information among diverse services. Specifically, SOA allows the underlying service capabilities and interfaces to be composed into processes. Each process is itself a service, one that now offers up a new, aggregated capability. Because each new process is exposed through a standardized interface, the underlying implementation of the individual service providers is free to change without impacting how the service is consumed. (Microsoft, retrieved 10:14, 24 April 2007 (MEST))
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an evolution of distributed computing based on the request/reply design paradigm for synchronous and asynchronous applications [...] What's key to these services is their loosely coupled nature; i.e., the service interface is independent of the implementation. ([1], retrieved 10:14, 24 April 2007 (MEST))
SOA looks like object-oriented programming principles applied to services. However it's more than encapsulation and interfaces...
Architecture
Elements of a service-oriented architecture
Links
- Introductions / Tutorials
- Service-oriented architecture (Wikipedia)
- What Is Service-Oriented Architecture by Hao He, Webservices.xml, retrieved 10:14, 24 April 2007 (MEST).
- What is service-oriented architecture? An introduction to SOA by Raghu R. Kodali, JavaWorld.com, 06/13/05.
- SOA programming model for implementing Web services, Part 1: Introduction to the IBM SOA programming model. By Donald Ferguson and Marcia Stopckton, IBM.
- Service-Oriented Architecture Explained by Sayed Hashimi.