Proponents of service-oriented architecture often talk about the technology in revolutionary terms, emphasizing SOA’s ability to cross information barriers and turn the world of software development upside down.
The promise of SOA is a plug-and-play software environment of loosely coupled information technology services, or tasks. It replaces tightly integrated software applications that handle specific tasks. The SOA approach? Break up a software application into bite-size chunks with standard interfaces. Think of each chunk as a service that performs a basic task. Let other software developers use your service in their software applications. There’s no need to recode for every task. With a loose coupling of services, you can create a new software application.
SOA’s value is the freedom to adapt software quickly to changing business needs, integrate new functions and spend scarce resources on new capabilities rather than on duplicating existing ones. But after the application development excitement fades, people have to think about managing the SOA application.
