Programming .NET 3.5

Chapter 10. Introducing Windows Communication Foundation: Accessible Service-Oriented Architecture

There is a great deal of buzz around the concept of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), and with good reason. People engaged in the world of enterprise computing spend a great deal of time and energy getting systems to talk to one another and interoperate. In an ideal world, we would like to be able to connect systems arbitrarily, and without the need for proprietary software, in order to create an open, interoperable computing environment. SOA (often pronounced SO-ah) is a big step in the right direction.

ora: SOA Defined

A Service-Oriented Architecture is based on four key abstractions:

• An application frontend

• A service

• A service repository

• A service bus

The application frontend is decoupled from the services. Each service has a "contract" that defines what it will do, and one or more interfaces to implement that contract.

The service repository provides a home for the services, and the service bus provides an industry-standard mechanism for connecting to and interacting with the services.

Because all the services are decoupled from one another and from the application frontend, SOA provides the desired level of interoperability in a nonproprietary open-systems environment.

Enterprise architects look at SOA (Figure 10-1) as a means of helping businesses respond more quickly and cost-effectively to changing market conditions.

Figure 10-1. SOA overview

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) provides ...