sábado, 17 de julio de 2010

Service-oriented architecture


In computing, a service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a flexible set of design principles used during the phases of systems development and integration. A deployed SOA-based architecture will provide a loosely-integrated suite of services that can be used within multiple business domains.

SOA also generally provides a way for consumers of services, such as web-based applications, to be aware of available SOA-based services. For example, several disparate departments within a company may develop and deploy SOA services in different implementation languages; their respective clients will benefit from a well understood, well defined interface to access them. XML is commonly used for interfacing with SOA services, though this is not required.

SOA defines how to integrate widely disparate applications for a world that is Web based and uses multiple implementation platforms. Rather than defining an API, SOA defines the interface in terms of protocols and functionality. An endpoint is the entry point for such an SOA implementation.

Service-orientation requires loose coupling of services with operating systems, and other technologies that underlie applications. SOA separates functions into distinct units, or services[1], which developers make accessible over a network in order to allow users to combine and reuse them in the production of applications. These services and their corresponding consumers communicate with each other by passing data in a well-defined, shared format, or by coordinating an activity between two or more services[2].

One can envisage SOA as a sort of continuum, as opposed to distributed computing or modular programming.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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