What is service-oriented architecture?

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) emerged in the early part of this century as an evolution of distributed computing. Before SOA, services were understood as the end result of the application development process. In SOA, the application itself is composed of services. Services can be delivered individually or combined as components in a larger, composite service.

Services interact over the wire using a protocol such as REST or SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). Services are loosely coupled, meaning the service interface is independent of the underlying implementation. Developers or system integrators can compose one or more services into an application without necessarily knowing how each service is implemented.

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