In the modern day, information technology (IT) systems of the enterprise are continuously challenged with demands to serve ever changing requirements. In order to get more out of existing investments, rather than developing new applications to serve such demands, IT companies are moving towards the service-oriented paradigm.

What is a service?

In the service oriented paradigm, a service is a well-defined and self-contained function, one that would not not depend on the context or state of other services.

SOA?

Developing services and deploying them using a service-oriented architecture (SOA) is the best way to utilize existing IT systems to meet new challenges. SOA represents a new generation of distributed computing architecture.

Definition of SOA!

According to the OASIS SOA Reference Model definition[1], “SOA is 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“.

In simple terms, Service-oriented Architecture is a collection of services. Services in a SOA can communicate with each other. This communication could take the shape of either simple data processing, or, it could even involve two or more services coordinating some activity. The combination of services, both internal and external to an organization, makes up a service-oriented architecture.

[1] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=soa-rm