3 THINGS BUSINESS DECISION–MAKERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SOA

SOA essentially implies an application architecture made up of loosely coupled “services” (for example the various software features that are used in creating and processing a customer order), and service “consumers” (other services that need to create customer orders, for example). Most business software applications can, of course, create customer orders. But a business application that is made up of services allows one to easily “rearrange” the processes that create the need for a customer order, and how that customer order is created. This process tends to be very rigid in non-SOA applications.

An SOA-based application architecture works in much the same way as your Web browser as it accesses functionality through the public Internet. Regardless of whether you are using Internet Explorer®, Netscape®, FireFox® or Opera, or what version of those browsers you are using, you can still access information and interact with systems on the Web. The relationship between Web sites, databases, java applets, and other executable files on the Internet and your browser is loosely defined. Web site functionality may change without affecting the rest of the Web or your browser.