Service-Oriented Architecture: What Is It and How Can It Help Your Business?

Service-Oriented
Architecture:
What Is It and How
Can It Help Your
Business?
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Introduction
Service-oriented architecture, or SOA, is a hot topic in business today. You may have read about service-orient-
ed architectures and are wondering how they can affect your business as well as how they can be of use to
you. By looking at it from both a real-world perspective as well as a technical perspective, you will forge a
solid understanding of service-oriented architecture from which you can jump off to implementing this tech-
nology within your business.
Defining Service-Oriented Architectures
Essentially, a service is the implementation of some step in one or more business processes, and a service-ori-
ented architecture takes advantage of those services. More importantly, service-oriented architectures have
many benefits for businesses
, including enabling better alignment of business requirements and technology.
Service-oriented architectures also allow services to be easily swapped out or reused for different purposes.
And a service-oriented architecture gives your business the ability to leverage existing services easily while
also leaving the option to write new services to fulfill specific purposes.
Service-oriented architectures rely heavily on programming in XML, a text-based mark up language that
enables developers to define their own specific structure of data. However, one major benefit of setting up a
service-oriented architecture is that it doesn’t matter which language or protocol is used. Instead, the process
can be written to be used across many platforms.
One simple example of service-oriented architecture would be a program that, installed on a computer, can
organize a user’s digital music library. The program may work best if it has access to the Internet and can uti-
lize a service – looking up the name of a CD or song title in a large music database, for example, or giving
access to an online store that uses the same database in a different manner. Service-oriented architectures are

essentially about giving existing services new functionality
.
How Service-Oriented Architectures Can Benefit a
Business
When used by businesses, service-oriented architectures can make it possible for the establishment of, for
example, a complete online registration process. This process could include a way to send the registrant an
email with specific directions to the facility without requiring the person to go to a third-party website for that
information. Instead, a program could be written to pull the information directly from the registration applica-
tion, reference the third-party website
,
and seamlessly integrate the response into the confirmation email.
The same could hold true for weather information – the program could give the user information about the
Charlie Fink, VP of Product Development and Delivery, Westlake
Service-Oriented Architecture:What Is It
and How Can It Help Your Business?
Copyright ©2007 Global Knowledge T
raining LLC. All rights reserved.
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w
eather based on both the user’s zip code and the zip code for the location of the training. This would enable
the business to offer a value-added service in its emails – the weather information would be provided directly,
rather than from a third-party site that the end user would have to access independently, and would be per-
sonalized. Other items involved in the service-oriented architecture could include scheduling, registration, and
credit card processing.
Services could also allow different ways to access a single database. Using a real-world example of service-ori-
ented architecture, a company could make its database of books and music available to outside users as a
service, and the users could choose to create processes that pull particular information out of that database.
For example, someone could create a process that allows visitors to a website to search an artist name within
that larger database, and the results returned would only encompass information relating to compact discs,
rather than to book titles that also mentioned the name.

Taking an example of service-oriented architecture from the business world, a database of courses could be
utilized as a service to give different individuals access to different aspects of the database in different man-
ners
. Trainers, for example, could be given access to a thick client application that enables them to search a
complete database, including courses that are not made available to the public. The public, on the other hand,
could be given access to a web-based application through which it could search for courses falling on particu-
lar dates or covering particular topics
. And sales people could be given even a different w
ay to access that
database to find out not only when courses are available but in which locations, leading to weather informa-
tion and driving directions. All of this could be accomplished seamlessly using service-oriented architectures,
without needing to create multiple databases for multiple users.
Making Adjustments More Easily with Service-Oriented
Architectures
One difference between a service-oriented architecture and a more traditional development mode is that serv-
ice-oriented architectures allow a company to hand over a more focused set of requirements to its IT team.
In
addition,
while the full establishment of a service-oriented architecture can take an extended period of time
, an
individual service can be built in a few weeks. This means that there is room for easier adjustments to be made
on a service and time for mistak
es to be caught earlier in the process, which can further benefit a business.
Conclusion
Essentially, a service-oriented architecture can be a huge benefit for any company that uses Web-based appli-
cations. It can provide new functionality for programs written on outdated platforms and it can save developers
time in not needing to write new processes when useful ones already are in existence. While service-oriented
architectures may be the hot topic of the moment, it seems clear that they will continue to be an important
part of business for many years to come
.

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About the Author
Charlie Fink is the vice president of product development and delivery for WestLake Training and Development.
He has been designing and developing leading software solutions for over 15 years and has also developed
client training focused on use and support of custom software systems. Prior to joining WestLake, Charlie was
the vice president and chief product architect for the Arlington Group, as well as a principal of AEC software.
To learn more about information technology training, please visit .
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raining LLC. All rights reserved.
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