SQL Server™ 2005 Bible

Chapter 32. Building an SOA Data Store with Web Services

In This Chapter

• Web Services

• SOAP Envelopes

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is all the rage. Attend any architectural conference and a majority of the sessions are about some aspect of SOA. SQL Server 2005 has numerous evolutionary advances, but the primary revolutionary change is its new SOA capability.

Essentially, service-oriented architecture is a software design philosophy that emphasizes encapsulation of business functionality within an application, and applications are loosely coupled using a common method of communication:

• Application encapsulation means that the interface, or contract, between the two applications is rock solid; neither communicating application needs to know about the internal functionality of the other application, and implementation changes within the application won't affect the other application.

• A common interface means that any application can request data from any other application using the same protocols. Typically, this means Web Services and native Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)/XML as the preferred method of communicating between SOA-enabled applications.

SQL Server 2005 includes a set of technologies geared specifically for SOA architectures:

• Native HTTP endpoints and SOAP

• Service Broker—By their nature, SOA applications must scale well; that's a primary requirement. To achieve the scalability, SQL Server 2005 includes Service Broker, an asynchronous internal message queue that's designed ...