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SOA Demystified

Posted by Lori MacVittie on July 29, 2005

Tags: Other,  SOA,  SOAP,  UDDI,  WSDL,  Web Services

Channel: Other

Intuitive Function

The function--or operation, in SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)-speak--of your services should be intuitive and based on their names, such as submitPurchaseOrder or validateCustomerAccounts. With an SOA, unlike a typical application infrastructure, only one service should be authoritative for any given business function. Although enterprise applications usually contain the same snippets of business logic or even reuse particular objects, such as a customer order, with an SOA you make only one instance of a business function available. That way, you can reuse the functionality in multiple applications and rapidly change business logic to adapt to changing market conditions, which is the biggest benefit of an SOA.

When you represent one instance of a business function within the larger SOA, any changes to the business rules or storage mechanisms get updated automatically in all applications that rely on that function. So any alterations to pricing or discounting rules, for example, are applied to all your applications. This reduces the time needed to implement a change and lets you react rapidly to changing market conditions.

SOA What? Click to Enlarge