Service Oriented Architecture

Architecture (SOA) is the underlying structure supporting communications between services. SOA defines how two computing entities, such as programs, interact in such a way as to enable one entity to perform a unit of work on behalf of another entity. Service interactions are defined using a description language. Each interaction is self-contained and loosely coupled, so that each interaction is independent of any other interaction.

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)-based Web services are becoming the most common implementation of SOA. However, there are non-Web services implementations of SOA that provide similar benefits. The protocol independence of SOA means that different consumers can communicate with the service in different ways. Ideally, there should be a management layer between the providers and consumers to ensure complete flexibility regarding implementation protocols.