Patterns: Implementing Self-Service in an SOA Environment

Chapter 3. SOA and the Enterprise Service Bus 35

3.1.4 The advantages of SOA

Use of SOA has the following advantages to achieving loosely coupled, flexible

integration of IT systems:

򐂰 Heterogeneous systems can be integrated because of

implementation-independent interfaces that describe services.

򐂰 The description of service interfaces in terms of a common business process

and data model minimizes any interdependencies to only what matters to the

business.

򐂰 The encapsulation of services with standard interfaces enables reuse and

flexibility. Each service is defined and implemented in only one place, so

changing it is straightforward.

There are benefits in development and maintenance costs, but flexibility is the

primary goal in SOA.

With clearly defined interfaces between all business systems, it is possible to

model and change the business process that are captured by them at a level

above individual systems. Thus, SOA is an enabler for process modelling and

automation at an enterprise scale.

Currently, and for some time to come, many of the technologies that are used to

implement SOAs are evolving rather than maturing and stablizing. Therefore,

individual SOA solutions must make carefully balanced decisions among

customized, proprietary, and open-standard technologies, which characteristics

and components of SOA to implement, and which areas of business function and

process to which to apply them. Of course, you should balance these decisions

Data format independence The payload of a message is passed in a

data format independent manner.

Platform independence Messaging infrastructure supports the

communication between different

platforms and even provides mapping

functionality between different data and

encoding formats.

Communication model transparency Messaging not only supports the

synchronous communication model but

also the asynchronous thus providing

enhanced flexibility in binding and

orchestrating services.

Coupling aspect Justification