Describing SOA

A colleague, Nigel Bakker, and I recently were asked to present a SOA training course, while finding content was easy, we battled to find a coherent definition of SOA that encompasses the enterprise elements of this paradigm as well as the application level element.

We came up with the following:

• Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) is an Enterprise Architecture Style
• SOA is not a methodology it is an approach or mindset usually called a paradigm
• SOA needs a firm foundation or the enterprise will fail as every piece of the SOA should contribute.
• Service Orientated Application Design (SOAD) provides this foundation.
• SOA is both a business and IT architecture approach, whilst SOAD is an application design approach aligned with and supporting SOA.

A Thomas Erl quote was useful
“Service-orientation is a design paradigm comprised of a specific set of design principles. The application of these principles to the design of solution logic results in service-oriented solution logic. The most fundamental unit of service-oriented solution logic is the service.”
The interesting point he makes is that the focus here is on “solution logic” which is exactly the scope that applies in building an application using “service orientation”, but can equally apply when building cross application services