SOA Ecosystem–Interconnected Principles, Patterns, and Frameworks - Applied SOA Patterns on the Oracle Platform - page 56

SOA Standards and Patterns implementation roadmap
We didn't cover all the existing WS-* specifications, but the ones described earlier are
quite capable of dealing with challenges, something that the contemporary SOA is unable
to address. These specifications were under development during the last ten years, and
some of them are still evolving; however, overall, the technology stack based on WS-* is
very mature. Although some of the specifications are a bit complex, the fact that all of
them are based on clearly defined principles has made them commonly acceptable and ad-
optable not only by main market players/sponsors of standardization committees, but also
by open source communities, acting as some of the most valuable contributors toward the
proliferation of these standards.
Abstract principles and vendor-neutral standards do not exist in a vacuum; they have prac-
tical service boundaries as we have seen during the discussion of the standards' imple-
mentation roadmap. We even touched upon some roles of patterns discussing principle-
standards relations. These relations could have many forms and dependencies with re-
gards to the infrastructural areas of service implementation. Every area has its own dis-
tinctive characteristics, a proprietary for every single step of service's lifecycle such as
analysis, modeling, development, testing, and implementation.
Collectively, they are shaping service boundaries in the form of complex building blocks
that connect internal information assets with external consumers of those assets.
Distinctive characteristics of these blocks are formalized in a collection of design rules,
one for each particular area; however, collectively, they aim at the same goal of maintain-
ing a desirable level of composability for services that exist in these ecosystems.