Applied SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture and Design Strategies

CHAPTER 2

SOA – Architecture Fundamentals

Any problem in computer science can be solved by another layer of abstraction.

– Butler Lampson

Chapter 1 discussed the expectations for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the requirements for delivering on those expectations. At one level, the extent to which expectations are met will depend on how successful an organization is at creating and reusing services. To be more specific, success will not depend on any individual service, but on the overall collection of services and how well they support the ability to modify existing solutions and build new ones faster to meet changing requirements. We went on to describe the SOA reference architecture as the foundation that allows reusable and composable services to be created with a scope that is larger than any single project. So, just what is architecture, and what are the components of the SOA reference architecture? This chapter describes:

• The general principles of architecture
• The basics of SOA
• Business-driven SOA
• The relationship of SOA to other architectures
• What a service is and the characteristics of a service
• Service types and purposes
• The SOA reference architecture

What Is Architecture?

Software architecture is a description of a software system in terms of its major components, their relationships, and the information that passes among them. In essence, architecture is a plan for building systems that meet well-defined requirements and, by extension, systems that possess ...