Talk:SOA/archive Jun6 2011

Complete archive of SOA from June 6, 2011, linked from Talk:SOA:

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Service Orientation (SO) are two intertwined concepts. Service Oriented Architecture is a computer system's architectural style for creating and using business processes, packaged as services, throughout their lifecycle. Service Orientation is the organizational paradigm, focused at obtaining and creating a better alignment between IS and the business processes and structure of an enterprise. When discussing SOA and SO, the notion of Business Process Management should be taken into account.

The concepts are still evolving and other sources may use different definitions.

Two views on same topic
Often the term SOA is overloaded with varying interpretations. Service Oriented Architecture has become a term which has steadily been allocated with ever more ‘meaning’. From a set of (technical) architectural principles, it has been deemed a design approach, a product according to various vendors, a strategy, a business IT alignment approach or even a paradigm.

Service Orientation is proposed as a coordinating paradigm. Strikingly enough no explicit definition of Service Orientation as a paradigm has been encountered in the literature. Often Service Orientation and SOA are mixed up. One of the reasons is the growing hype around this term and the many commercial interests trying to join in with their interpretation of the hype.