SOA and Web Service Protocols

Service Oriented Architecture SOA and Web Service Protocols

SOA Service Oriented Architecture may be built on Web services standards (e.g., using SOAP) that have gained broad industry acceptance. These standards (also referred to as web service specifications) also provide greater interoperability and some protection from lock-in to proprietary vendor software. One can, however, implement Service Oriented ArchitectureSOA using any service-based technology, such as Jini.

Service-oriented architecture SOA is often defined as services exposed using the Web Services Protocol Stack[citation needed] . The base level of web services standards relevant to Service Oriented Architecture SOA includes the following:

XML - a markup language for describing data in message payloads in a document format
HTTP (or HTTPS) - request/response protocol between clients and servers used to transfer or convey information
SOAP - a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over a computer network, normally using HTTP
XACML - a markup language for expressing access control rules and policies.
Web Services Description Language (WSDL) - XML-based service description that describes the public interface, protocol bindings and message formats required to interact with a web service
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) - An XML-based registry to publish service descriptions (WSDL) and allow their discovery

Note, however, that a system does not necessarily need to use any or all of these standards to be "service-oriented." For example, some service oriented systems have been implemented using Corba, Jini and REST.