Introduction: Service fundamentals
In a service-oriented IT landscape that has been shaped according to the principles of service-orientation, functionality and data are provided by means of services. These services can be defined in a uniform fashion based on international standards (XML, SOAP, WS-*), or they may be based on more traditional and proprietary mediums.
Modern integration technologies, such as the ESB, enable consumption of services regardless of location, platform or programming language. By orchestrating services in the desired order, business processes can be optimally supported with functionality and data from systems both internal and external to the IT enterprise.
