SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that supports service orientation.

IBM defined Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a business-centric IT architectural

approach that supports integrating your business as linked, repeatable business tasks, or services.

A service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and
updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online. SAO is also intended to
be independent of vendors, products and technologies.

Service orientation is a way of thinking in terms of services and service based development and
the outcome of services.

 A service has four properties according to one of many definitions of SOA

 It logically represent a repeatable business activity with a specific outcome.
 It is a self contained.
 It is a black box for its consumers, meaning the consumer does not have to be aware of
the service’s inner workings
 It may be composed of other services

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Principles

They are nine principles when generating an SOA service which include:

 Standardized Service Contract

Service adheres to a service description. A service needs to have some information that defines
what the service is about.

 Loose Coupling

Service minimizes dependencies on each other. So if the service functionally breaks at several
points in time, this should not crush the client application or stop it from running.

 Service Abstraction

Services wrap the logic they encapsulate from the unknown external world. The service shouldn't
show how it performs its functionality.

 Service Reusability

Logic is divided into services to maximize re-use.

 Service Autonomy