Architecture/Visions/Service Oriented Architecture

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Service-orientation describes an architecture that uses loosely coupled independent services to provide resources that can be accessed without knowledge of their underlying platform implementation. The key is independent services with defined interfaces that can be called to perform their tasks in a standard way, without the service having foreknowledge of the calling application, and without the application having or needing knowledge of how the service actually performs its tasks. SOA is a style of information systems architecture that enables the creation of applications built by combining loosely coupled and interoperable services based on a formal interface definition that is independent of the underlying platform and programming language. The interface definition hides the implementation of the language-specific service. SOA-based systems can therefore be independent of development technologies and platforms.