Service Oriented Architecture And Web Services- Concepts Technologies And Tools - - Soa2(1).pdf

Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services: Concepts, Technologies, and Tools


Article
Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services: Concepts,
Technologies, and Tools


By Ed Ort, April 2005
Articles Index
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a hot topic in puting because many IT professionals see
the potential of an SOA -- especially a web services-based SOA -- in dramatically speeding up the application
development process. They also see it as a way to build applications and systems that are more adaptable,
and in doing so, they see IT ing more agile in responding to changing business needs. Not only is SOA
a hot topic, but it's clearly the wave of the future. Gartner reports that "By 2008, SOA will be a prevailing
software engineering practice, ending the 40-year domination of monolithic software architecture" and that
"Through 2008, SOA and web services will be implemented together in more than 75 percent of new SOA or
web services projects." But despite this strong trend, some in the munity don't feel that the web
services underpinning for an SOA is mature enough for their enterprise to consider migration to a service-
oriented architecture. For others, the terms service-oriented architecture and web services draw a blank stare.
An earlier article, presented a brief overview of SOA and the role of web services in realizing it. This article
supplements that earlier article. If you're not familiar with SOA and web services, this article aims to familiarize
you with them. It defines some of the key terms and concepts related to SOA and web services. A critical
mass of widely-adopted technologies is available now to implement and use a web services-based SOA, and
more technologies, as well as tools, are on the way. Figure 1 identifies some of these technologies and tools.
Each layer of the figure shows technologies or tools that leverage technologies in the surrounding layers. This
article describes what thes