Definitions
Commentators have provided multiple definitions of SOA.
The OASIS group and the Open Group have both created formal definitions. OASIS defines SOA as the following:
A paradigm for organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities that may be under the control of different ownership domains. It provides a uniform means to offer, discover, interact with and use capabilities to produce desired effects consistent with measurable preconditions and expectations.
According to Thomas Erl:
SOA represents an open, agile, extensible, federated, composable architecture comprised of autonomous, QoS-capable, vendor diverse, interoperable, discoverable, and potentially reusable services, implemented as Web services. SOA can establish an abstraction of business logic and technology, resulting in a loose coupling between these domains. SOA is an evolution of past platforms, preserving successful characteristics of traditional architectures, and bringing with it distinct principles that foster service-orientation in support of a service-oriented enterprise. SOA is ideally standardized throughout an enterprise, but achieving this state requires a planned transition and the support of a still evolving technology set.
Read more about this topic: Service-oriented Architecture
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