SOA Concepts

SOA Service Oriented Architecture Concepts

Architecture is not tied to a specific technology. It may be implemented using a wide range of technologies, including REST, RPC, DCOM, CORBA, Web Services or WCF. Service Oriented Architecture SOA can be implemented using one of these protocols and, for example, might use a file system mechanism to communicate data conforming to a defined interface specification between processes conforming to the service oriented architecture SOA concept. The key is independent services with defined interfaces that can be called to perform their tasks in a standard way, without the service having foreknowledge of the calling application, and without the application having or needing knowledge of how the service actually performs its tasks.

Elements of SOA, by Dirk Krafzig, Karl Banke, and Dirk Slama. Enterprise SOA Service Oriented Architecture. Prentice Hall, 2005

Service Oriented Architecture SOA Meta Model, The Linthicum Group, 2007SOA can also be regarded as a style of information systems architecture that enables the creation of applications that are built by combining loosely coupled and interoperable services[citation needed]. These services inter-operate based on a formal definition (or contract, e.g., WSDL) that is independent of the underlying platform and programming language. The interface definition hides the implementation of the language-specific service. Service Oriented Architecture SOA-based systems can therefore be independent of development technologies and platforms (such as Java, .NET etc). Services written in C# running on .NET platforms and services written in Java running on Java EE platforms, for example, can both be consumed by a common composite application. Applications running on either platform can also consume services running on the other as Web services, which facilitates reuse.

Service Oriented Architecture SOA can support integration and consolidation activities within complex enterprise systems, but Service Oriented Architecture SOA does not specify or provide a methodology or framework for documenting capabilities or services.

High-level languages such as BPEL and specifications such as WS-CDL and WS-Coordination extend the service concept by providing a method of defining and supporting orchestration of fine grained services into more coarse-grained business services, which in turn can be incorporated into workflows and business processes implemented in composite applications or portals[citation needed].

The use of Service component architecture (SCA) to implement Service Oriented Architecture SOA is a current area of research.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture