Benefits of a SOA Service Oriented Architecture

Benefits of a SOA Service Oriented Architecture

SOA Service Oriented Architecture in its first phase is not a technology, but instead an infrastructure framework that enables software services to be orchestrated in such a way that they communicate with one another in the appropriate sequence while still being completely loosely coupled. It differentiates itself from the concepts of object-oriented development, client/server computing, and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) mainly in that it is very business process oriented. In the past, IT projects were oriented around the applications and the technology. The Service Oriented Architecture SOA approach is more of a business concept than a technical concept. SOA Service Oriented Architecture hides the technical complexities by providing a more business friendly view through a service and process oriented infrastructure. Due to the necessity of canonical documents for the creation of Service Oriented Architecture SOA business processes, department and IT personnel must define a general language for domains, vocabulary, and services. Therefore a SOA implementation inevitably bridges the gap between organizational departments and the organization’s IT. IT processes can be created efficiently and implemented with great flexibility so that needed changes can be made with little expenditure of time and money. For example, if a new “Approval” service is to be used in our example process, only the mapping between the new Approval schema and the published and subscribed schemas need to be redefined – no other changes need to be made, not even to the process model because it works with canonical documents which have not been altered!

The conventional EAI concentrates mainly on the technical aspects of existing applications, SOA on the other hand focuses on the business level of the organization and its business processes. It enables the reuse of services, applications, and legacy systems in several different business processes. Applications and legacy systems can be utilized as Web Services within the SOA architecture. This is accomplished by “Wrapping” the application (or system) with a Web Service (Adaptor) interface (Web Service Wrapper). In summary, Service Oriented Architecture SOA encourages the collaboration between business departments and the organization’s IT segments, enables an efficient implementation of, and changes to, applications and processes, and has potential to same enormous amounts of time and money within an organizations IT. The reuse of existing systems, quick creation of business processes, and the ability to efficiently make changes to existing solutions is why Service Oriented Architecture SOA alters IT from a despised cost factor to an appreciated asset. In addition, due to its flexibility, process orientation, and loose coupling of services, SOA is an excellent basis for providing solutions for and monitoring organizations’ Compliance and Governance.