SOA definitions

Service Oriented Architecture SOA definitions

SOA Service Oriented Architecture is a design for linking business and computational resources (principally organizations, applications and data) on demand to achieve the desired results for service consumers (which can be end users or other services). OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) defines SOA as the following:

A paradigm for organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities that may be under the control of different ownership domains. It provides a uniform means to offer, discover, interact with and use capabilities to produce desired effects consistent with measurable preconditions and expectations.

There are multiple definitions of Service Oriented Architecture SOA, the OASIS group and the Open Group have created formal definition with depth which can be applied to both the technology and business domains.

Open Group SOA Definition (SOA-Definition)[3]
OASIS SOA Reference Model (SOA-RM)[4]
What Is Service-Oriented Architecture? (XML.com)
What is Service-Oriented Architecture? (Javaworld.com)
Webopedia definition
TechEncyclopedia definition
Object Management Group (OMG ) SOA Special Interest Group definition
WhatIs.com definition
SearchWebServices.com Numerous SOA definitions by industry experts

Though many definitions of Service Oriented Architecture SOA limit themselves to technology or just web services, this is predominantly pushed by technology vendors; in 2003 they talked just of web services, while in 2006 the talk is of events and process engines.

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