Aspects of SOA: An Entry Point for Starters
It serves as an introductory guide for business and IT executives adopting SOA, but is incremental as it compiles existing information without novel contributions.
The paper provides an overview of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) by listing key aspects such as definitions, components, vendor support, and challenges to help adopters understand its role in software and business markets, without presenting new research results or concrete numbers.
Because Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is one of the hottest topics that is currently gaining momentum, and the number of its adopters (both business and IT executives) is increasing in a tremendous manner, it is really a must to enlist important aspects related to it in order to allow these adopters to better understand the role that it can play in both software and business markets. These aspects varies from the definition of SOA and key components of it, different forms of support given by elite software vendors to it, its evolution history, the relationship between it and web services, the future expectations about its uses and benefits in different organizations, the relationship between SOA and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and various applications that can use it to overcome limitations related to other traditional methods. Moreover, challenges that face SOA in software market should be addressed and discussed in order to be able to see the big picture and to look for better solutions for them.