A SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) defines the inter-relationships between the different functional elements of an application, termed services, through well-defined interfaces. These interfaces are defined in XML creating implementation-neutral and standards-based services. This allows complete interoperability of services built on disparate systems and facilitates loose coupling between services. SOA represents the evolution from the object-oriented models that have dominated software development in the past few decades to serve the following business requirements: · support for dynamic capabilities; · better foundations for intelligent systems or semantic solutions; · reuse of existing applications; · improved potential of user led application composition. SOA is used as a key option for kBOS based integration solutions The kBOS approach has the advantage of supporting the definition of SOA from business processes and knowledge services which is important at this early stage of SOA maturity. SOA provides the enabling infrastructure for building dynamic capabilities. Such capabilities are needed for business networking which has emerged as a competitive strategy in the mid 90s based on loosely coupled processes linking the enterprise with its customers, suppliers and business partners. Dynamic capabilities are generally needed for agile organisations consisting of constantly changing project teams, task forces, alliances and other informal structures. The benefit of a loosely-coupled system lies in its adaptability to continuous change. Each service can be easily changed and new services can be added with increasing levels of automation and ‘intelligence’. Implementation of a Service-Oriented Architecture enables companies to better leverage their existing technology assets, gain increased transparency into their data and processes in real-time, synchronize redundant systems, and map new and existing business processes onto a dynamically defined operational roadmap. In SOA-based systems individual services can be built with object-oriented designs, or other alternatives. With the kBOS platform we always used a service based approach in that each element of kBOS applications is a highly adaptable knowledge service. However the important advantage of SOA lies in the interfaces themselves. Compared to the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) which provides similar SOA concepts, SOA relies on a XML. By describing interfaces in the XML-based Web Services Definition Language (WSDL), services have moved to a more dynamic and flexible interface system than was possible with the Interface Definition Language (IDL) found in CORBA. It can be argued that the fundamental difference of SOA compared to previous developments is that it is build on XML which is recognised as the most important software standard of our era and XML based web services standards that makes the vision a realistic prospect.
A SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) defines the inter-relationships between the different functional elements of an application, termed services, through well-defined interfaces. These interfaces are defined in XML creating implementation-neutral and standards-based services. This allows complete interoperability of services built on disparate systems and facilitates loose coupling between services.
SOA represents the evolution from the object-oriented models that have dominated software development in the past few decades to serve the following business requirements:
· support for dynamic capabilities;
· better foundations for intelligent systems or semantic solutions;
· reuse of existing applications;
· improved potential of user led application composition.
SOA is used as a key option for kBOS based integration solutions The kBOS approach has the advantage of supporting the definition of SOA from business processes and knowledge services which is important at this early stage of SOA maturity.
SOA provides the enabling infrastructure for building dynamic capabilities. Such capabilities are needed for business networking which has emerged as a competitive strategy in the mid 90s based on loosely coupled processes linking the enterprise with its customers, suppliers and business partners. Dynamic capabilities are generally needed for agile organisations consisting of constantly changing project teams, task forces, alliances and other informal structures. The benefit of a loosely-coupled system lies in its adaptability to continuous change. Each service can be easily changed and new services can be added with increasing levels of automation and ‘intelligence’.
Implementation of a Service-Oriented Architecture enables companies to better leverage their existing technology assets, gain increased transparency into their data and processes in real-time, synchronize redundant systems, and map new and existing business processes onto a dynamically defined operational roadmap.
In SOA-based systems individual services can be built with object-oriented designs, or other alternatives. With the kBOS platform we always used a service based approach in that each element of kBOS applications is a highly adaptable knowledge service.
However the important advantage of SOA lies in the interfaces themselves. Compared to the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) which provides similar SOA concepts, SOA relies on a XML. By describing interfaces in the XML-based Web Services Definition Language (WSDL), services have moved to a more dynamic and flexible interface system than was possible with the Interface Definition Language (IDL) found in CORBA.
It can be argued that the fundamental difference of SOA compared to previous developments is that it is build on XML which is recognised as the most important software standard of our era and XML based web services standards that makes the vision a realistic prospect.