Service-oriented architecture can be defined as a group of services, which communicate with each other. SOA uses predefined services that are available online to build a piece of software much like a puzzle is put together from a bunch of smaller pieces. Except the pieces, in this preverbal puzzle, can be reshapen to be used in other puzzles and other projects. The pieces are also available to anyone and everyone, so we can all use them to build different kinds of software cheaply and efficiently.
A service-oriented architecture is an information technology approach or strategy in which applications make use of (perhaps more accurately, rely on) services available in a network such as the World Wide Web. Implementing a service-oriented architecture can involve developing applications that use services, making applications available as services so that other applications can use those services, or both.
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a hot topic in enterprise computing because many IT professionals see the potential of an SOA in dramatically speeding up the application development process. They also see it as a way to build applications and systems that are more adaptable, and in doing so, they see IT becoming more agile in responding to changing business needs. Not only is SOA a hot topic, but it’s clearly the wave of the future. Despite this strong trend, some in the IT community don’t feel that the web services underpinning for an SOA is mature enough for their enterprise to consider migration to a service-oriented architecture. For others, the terms service-oriented architecture and web services draw a blank stare.
One thing that makes SOA a very distinct and powerful process is the ability to reuse of business services. Developers within an enterprise and across enterprises can take the code developed for existing business applications, expose it as web services, and then reuse it to meet new business requirements. Reusing functionality that already exists outside or inside an enterprise instead of developing code that reproduces those functions can result in a huge savings in application development cost and time. The benefit of reuse grows dramatically as more and more business services get built, and incorporated into different applications.
The reuse of services gives SOA the advantage of also being incredibly coast effective. Other approaches that integrate disparate business resources such as legacy systems, business partner applications, and department-specific solutions are expensive because they tend to tie these components together in a customized way. Customized solutions are costly to build because they require extensive analysis, development time, and effort. They’re also costly to maintain and extend because they’re typically tightly-coupled, so that changes in one component of the integrated solution require changes in other components. By simply stringing premade services you can there for make it much easier to create software and decrease the time to do so.
SOA and web services are not just abstract concepts, they’re real approaches to solving today’s IT problems. It’s a way of sharing functions (typically business functions) in a widespread and flexible way. The befits they provide can revolutionize the software development industry by allowing us to make better software at a lower price.
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