Contemporary SOA is at the core of the service-oriented computing platform

Contemporary SOA is at the core of the service-oriented computing platform

Before we get into the actual meaning behind contemporary SOA, let's first discuss how the term "SOA" has been tossed about within the IT industry. Many argue that the manner in which SOA is used to qualify products, designs, and technologies elevates this term beyond one that simply relates to architecture. SOA, some believe, has become synonymous with an entire new world application computing platform.

Past terms used to identify distinct application computing platforms were often suffixed with the word "architecture" when the architecture was actually being referenced. The terms "client-server" or "n- tier ," for example, can be used to classify a tool, an administration infrastructure, or an application architecture.

With SOA, however, the actual acronym has become a multi-purpose buzzword used frequently when discussing an application computing platform consisting of Web services technology and service-orientation principles. Because the acronym already represents the word "architecture" we are unfortunately subjected to statements that can be confusing.

Perhaps the best way to view it is that if a product, design, or technology is prefixed with "SOA," it is something that was (directly or indirectly) created in support of an architecture based on service-orientation principles. Along those same lines, this book, though partially titled "Service-Oriented Architecture," goes well beyond architectural boundaries to explore the contemporary service-oriented platform.

Because we positioned contemporary SOA as building upon and extending the primitiveSOA model, we already have a starting point for our definition:

Contemporary SOA represents an architecture that promotes service-orientation through the use of Web services .