Service-Oriented Architecture - Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers - page 168

JSON is built on two structures:
1. A collection of name/value pairs. In various languages, this is real-
ized as an object, record, structure, dictionary, hash table, keyed list,
or associative array.
2. An ordered list of values. In most languages, this is realized as an
array, vector, list, or sequence.
7.5 SOA Applications
An SOA can be thought of as an approach to building IT systems in which
business services are the key organizing principle to align IT systems with
the needs of the business. Any business that can implement an IT infra-
structure that allows it to change more rapidly than its competitors has an
advantage over them. The use of an SOA for integration, business process
management, and multichannel access allows any enterprise to create a more
strategic environment, one that more closely aligns with the operational
characteristics of the business. Earlier approaches to building IT systems
resulted in systems that were tied to the features and functions of a particu-
lar environment technology (such as CORBA, J2EE, and COM/DCOM) since
they employed environment-specific characteristics like procedure or object
or message orientation to provide solutions to business problems. The way
in which services are developed aligns them better with the needs of the
business than was the case with previous generations of technology. What is
new in the concept of SOA is the clear separation of the service interface from
execution technology, enabling choice of the best execution environment for
any job and tying all of these executional agents together using a consistent
architectural approach.
7.5.1 Rapid Application Integration
The combination of Web Services and SOA provides a rapid integration solu-
tion that readily aligns IT investments and corporate strategies by focusing
on shared data and reusable services rather than proprietary integration
products. These enterprise application integration (EAI) products proved
to be expensive, consumed considerable time and effort, and were prone to
higher rates of failure. Applications can more easily exchange data by using
a Web Service defined at the business logic layer than by using a different
integration technology because Web Services represent a common standard
across all types of software. XML can be used to independently define the
data types and structures. Creating a common Web Service layer or overlay
of services into the business logic tiers of application also allows you to use