Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Terminology
The use of terms such as services and processes allows business and IT to talk
about items in the same way, improving communication, and reducing impedance
mismatch between the two. The importance of this is greater than what it appears at
first because it drives IT to build and structure its systems around the business rather
than vice versa.
Interoperability
In the past, there have been competing platforms for the latest software
development fad. This manifested itself as CORBA and COM+, Smalltalk and
C++, Pascal and C. However, this time around, the standards are not based upon
the physical implementation, but upon the service interfaces and wire protocols. In
addition, these standards are generally text-based to avoid issues around conversion
between binary forms. This allows services implemented in C# under Windows
to inter-operate with Java or PL/SQL services running on Oracle SOA Suite under
Windows, Linux, or Unix. The major players Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, SAP, and others
have agreed on how to inter-operate together. This agreement has always been
missing in the past.
WS basic profile
There is an old IT joke that standards are great, there are so many to
choose from! Fortunately, the SOA vendors have recognized this and
have collaborated to create a basic profile, or collections of standards that
focus on interoperability. This is known as WS basic profile and details
the key web service standards that all vendors should implement to
allow for interoperability. SOA Suite supports this basic profile as well as
additional standards.
Extension and evolution
SOA recognizes that there are existing assets in the IT landscape and does not
force these to be replaced, preferring instead to encapsulate and later extend these
resources. SOA may be viewed as a boundary technology that reverses many of
the earlier development trends. Instead of specifying how systems are built at the
lowest level, it focuses on how services are described and how they inter-operate
in a standards-based world.
