SOA

SOA is not simply a technology or a product: it's a style of design, with many aspects (such as architectural, methodological and organisational) unrelated to the actual technology.

 

Integrated design, reuse of existing IT investments and above all, industry standards are the elements needed to create a robust SOA.

 

Enterprises still need to make forward progress and keep ahead of the competition. SOA (and typically Web Services as a concrete implementation of those principles) make this possible.

 

It is the gap between what the Web provides and what application integration requires that Web services are trying to fill.

 

SOA breaks the three-tier approach by inserting a new interface layer to de-couple the core business logic and database (back-end implementation choices) from the presentation layer and other applications. SOA turns business functions into services that can be reused and accessed through standard interfaces. 

 

Roles

The service-oriented architecture (SOA) consists of three roles: requester, provider, and broker.

Advantages of SOA

SOA provide several significant benefits for distributed enterprise systems. Some of the most notable benefits include: interoperability, efficiency, and standardization. We will briefly explore each of these in this section.