SOA fundamentals in a nutshell

Introduction to SOA

If you're still learning about SOA, you might want to read this introduction for some basic information before jumping into the tutorial.

SOA is an architecture approach for defining, linking, and integrating reusable business services that have clear boundaries and are self-contained with their own functionalities. Within this type of architecture, you can orchestrate the business services in business processes. Adopting the concept of services—a higher-level abstraction that's independent of application or infrastructure IT platform and of context or other services—SOA takes IT to another level, one that's more suited for interoperability and heterogeneous environments.

Because an SOA is built on standards acknowledged and supported by the major IT providers, such as Web services, you can quickly build and interconnect its services. You can interconnect between enterprises regardless of their supported infrastructure, which opens doors to delegation, sharing, reuse, and maximizing the benefits of your existing assets.

With an SOA established, you bring your internal IT infrastructure to a higher, more visible, and manageable level. With reusable services and high-level processes, change is easier than ever and is more like disassembling and reassembling parts (services) into new, business-aligned processes. This not only promotes efficiency and reuse, it provides a strong ability to change and align IT with business.