Enterprises have to identify their core assets and capitalize on them. SOA comes with a built-in thought process that helps simplify the integration points faced by an enterprise.

SOA Implementation Life Cycle

A typical approach to visualizing SOA implementation life cycle could be depicted as shown in Figure 1. The stages in this life cycle could overlap and recur as the project progresses and matures. There could be different facets to this life cycle, but the underlying concepts remain the same.

Design, Develop, Deploy, and Manage is a traditional life cycle methodology followed in most of the IT project implementations, but overlap and recurrence happening at all phases of this life cycle is unique to SOA implementation.

Figure 1. SOA Implementation Life Cycle

SOA Standards

Currently, there are a number of products that can enable SOA and provide value to business. SOA-based Web services products are sought after for early adoption. SOA standards are at infancy level. However, SOAs leverage existing Web services standards as they are mature enough to implement a successful SOA.

The SOA Reference Model has been defined at OASIS with Adobe Systems, NEC, and Fujitsu as the founding members of this Technical Committee. This group recently published a public review draft version of Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture 1.0 (SOA-RM) specification. The details of this specification can be found at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/16628/wd-soa-rm-pr1.pdf. This group is focused on developing a core reference model to guide and foster the creation of specific service oriented architectures.

Summary

This article has outlined some of the compelling reasons for going the Service Oriented Architecture way and has also tried to address some of SOA's core benefits. The Gartner Group predicts that, "By 2008, SOA will be a prevailing software engineering practice, ending the 40-year domination of monolithic software architecture." Enterprises should capitalize on SOAs because they are the key drivers in today's marketplace.

References

Web Services Architecture W3C Working Group Note: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/NOTE-ws-arch-20040211/

OASIS SOA Reference Model TC: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=soa-rm

About the Author

Arulazi Dhesiaseelan is a senior developer in the Global Delivery India Center (GDIC) of HP Services, Bangalore. He has a Master's Degree in computer applications from the PSG College of Technology in India. He has six years of focused IT experience. He was involved in the UDDI4J project hosted at http://uddi4j.org. He has extensively worked on Web service technologies such as WSDL, UDDI, and SOAP. Currently, Arulazi is involved in developing mobile device management solutions for HP's Service Delivery Platform (SDP). He can be reached at aruld@acm.org.

Story adapted from Developer.com.