SOA in Practice

Chapter 11. Service Lifecycle

SERVICES ARE PIECES OF SOFTWARE, JUST LIKE ANY OTHER SOFTWARE. THUS, THE USUAL LIFECYCLE FOR software development applies. However, there are some differences. Some of them are based on the fact that we talk about both software under development and software under maintenance. In addition, service lifecycles are only parts of more general and distributed development processes. This chapter introduces the service lifecycle and its associated topics.

Note that the service life cycle applies to different artifacts, such as service specifications, service implementations, and test code. For example, The WSDL Lifecycle discusses the lifecycle for WSDL files (Web Services files specifying services).

Services Under Development

A service is an IT representation of a business functionality. Thus, services are pieces of software. Although the language and format of this software can differ (for example, depending on the implementation platform and/or the classification of the service), it has the usual lifecycle of any software under development, which at its core consists of phases of design, implementation, integration, and bringing into production (see Figure 11-1).

Figure 11-1. A typical software lifecycle applies to services

Iterative Service Development

Of course, what we’ve learned about software development over the past years also applies here: in practice, ...