SOA What?
We’ve never had a business executive call us to say, “Gosh, I’d sure like to buy some of your SOA”.
We have heard business executives say, “We need greater flexibility and agility. We need to respond to change more quickly and more precisely”.
That’s where SOA – Service Oriented Architecture – comes in. It’s called “service-oriented” because it’s just like any other service. Think about ordering a hamburger in a restaurant. You and the server need:
- A common definition of what a hamburger is
- A common way to communicate and make requests
- A common definition for specialized instructions – like “medium rare”
- Agreed upon methods for how and when the product will be delivered
- Agreed upon methods for how to consume and pay for the product
Service-oriented applications do the same thing. They establish common definitions for important concepts like “price”, “quantity”, and “unit of measure”. They also establish standard ways to make requests and deliver results. So, it’s fairly easy for one service-oriented application to speak to another. They speak the same language and have a common set of definitions.
Assume that you start shipping your product to a new country, say Ecuador. All of a sudden, you need to calculate Ecuadorian value added tax (VAT). There’s probably a web-based, service-oriented application that does exactly that. If your business applications are also service-oriented, it’s fairly easy to send the appropriate price, quantity, and currency information to the application and get Ecuadorian VAT tax information in return.
Service-oriented applications are simple and effective ways to access new functionality. As such, they can help you be more agile and act and react more quickly. You can add new functionality or change your business processes in the field, on the fly. SOA can also change the structure of the software industry. More on that next week.
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