Beyond Buzzwords With SOA SOA has had time to mature, but
discussions around it are still laden with buzzwords and
unrealistic expectations. Learn what SOA is and isn't with the
first of a new series. A Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
facilitates flexibility and cost savings for businesses, but its
flexibility is also at fault for diluting the concept of SOA.
Many technologies can be used in support of designing systems
that may be described as SOA, which leads to a global
misunderstanding of the true spirit of SOA. We often get bogged
down talking about the technology, so this article is going to
take a step back and explain what it’s really about. What SOA Is
Not SOA is not any single system, technology, or application. It
is an architecture, or put another way: a way to design a group
of system; a methodology. The service-oriented part speaks to
the notion that systems interaction should be done via network-
enabled services. Most often, since they provide the most
flexibility, Web-based services and te