Service Oriented Architecture For Dummies®

Chapter 2. Noah's Architecture

In This Chapter

• All about architectures

• Defining services and business services as part of a service oriented architecture

• Defining service oriented architecture

• Four complications

We're about to define service oriented architecture. If you find our definition fraught with terms we haven't yet defined, you're right. Hold tight, we'll get there — we promise. Ready? Take a deep breath. . . .

We define a service oriented architecture as a software architecture for building applications that implement business processes or services by using a set of loosely coupled black-box components orchestrated to deliver a well-defined level of service.

Okay, now we're going to explain that definition.

What's an Architecture?

Before we go jumping off into explaining service oriented architecture, we're going to start with just plain old architecture (from an information technology point of view) to make sure we're all on the same page.

In the beginning, there were programs, and programs were good, and programs didn't need no stinking architectures. And then there was business, and the business grew, and the programs grew, and chaos was on the face of the business. And so, in an effort to create order, programmers adopted systematic structures to organize the programs and help the business. And any structure, be it a strip mall or the Taj Mahal, or even Noah's Ark, has some underlying design, however haphazard, known as an architecture. When we describe software structures, ...