Cloud Computing Bible

Chapter 13. Understanding Service Oriented Architecture

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using Service Oriented Architecture

• Defining message-based transactions

• Understanding processes and transactions

• Managing SOA distributed applications

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) describes a standard method for requesting services from distributed components and managing the results. Because the clients requesting services, the components providing the services, the protocols used to deliver messages, and the responses can vary widely, SOA provides the translation and management layer in an architecture that removes the barrier for a client obtaining desired services. With SOA, clients and components can be written in different languages and can use multiple messaging protocols and networking protocols to communicate with one another. SOA provides the standards that transport the messages and makes the infrastructure to support it possible. SOA provides access to reusable Web services over a TCP/IP network, which makes this an important topic to cloud computing going forward.

You don't need SOA if you are creating a monolithic cloud application that performs a specific function such as backup, e-mail, Web page access, or instant messaging. Many of the large and familiar cloud computing applications are monolithic and were built with proprietary technologies—albeit often on top of open source software and hardware. However, as cloud computing applications expand their capability to provide additional and diverse ...