Question: Learning about SOA. Is it mostly decoupling by way of web services, one service provides web services to another, thereby staying decoupled and encapsulated? Thanks.

edit: that and maybe a good front end to them like some MVC design?

Answer: 
Here's an answer I provided to another question a while ago which may help with SOA principles: [Rebuild N-tier app into Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2349352/rebuild-n-tier-app-into-service-oriented-architecture-soa/2366496#2366496)

Also the following is an intro to SOA: <http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-soa-design1/>

In short there's a lot more to it than just web-services, its how you make available coarse grained 'business services' for reuse by multiple systems, and how you then make calls across multiple business services to meet wider business processes.

Developing some web-services != SOA
Here is a good selection of links that challenge the idea that SOA is only about web services, it explores the idea that every class in the application is a service and we can use many different transports (web, tcp, queues) within our SOA. SOA is the methodology you use to build a service orientated application.

Here are some practical examples of how to build a SOA.

I would suggest you read articles by Thomas Erl and Roger Sessions, this will give you a firm handle on what SOA is all about.

[SOA Design Pattern](http://hubpages.com/_1k9ore6as3b3m/hub/ASP-NET-MVC-Patterns)

[Achieving integrity in a SOA](http://hubpages.com/_1k9ore6as3b3m/hub/Achieving-Non-Functional-Requirements-for-a-Service-Oriented-Software-Platform-Integrity)

[Why your SOA should be like a VW Beetle](http://hubpages.com/_1k9ore6as3b3m/hub/Why-your-Service-Orientated-Architecture-SOA-needs-to-be-like-a-VW-Beetle)

[SOA explained for your boss](http://hubpages.com/_1k9ore6as3b3m/hub/soa-with-wcf)

[Building a SOA](http://hubpages.com/_1k9ore6as3b3m/hub/Building-Service-Orientated-Architecture)

[WCF Service Performance](http://hubpages.com/_1k9ore6as3b3m/hub/WCF-Service-Performance)

Choosing a presentation pattern for a new or enterprise web development is a daunting task, in my opinion there are only three; View Model, Model-View-Presenter (MVP) or ASP.NET MVC (a Model2 derivative).

You can read the full article here [ASP.NET MVC Patterns](http://hubpages.com/_1k9ore6as3b3m/hub/ASP-NET-MVC-Patterns)