Service-orientation

Service-orientation is a design paradigm for computer software in the form of services. This approach improves the flexibility of your system by decomposing it into smaller, more manageable pieces. Each service then represents a specific functionality, and services can be combined to provide the functionality of a large software application.

Overview

Service-orientation is a way of thinking in terms of services and service-based development and the outcomes of services. A service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online.

A service has four properties according to one of many definitions of SOA:

• It logically represents a business activity with a specified outcome.
• It is self-contained.
• It is a black box for its consumers.
• It may consist of other underlying services.

Principles

Service-orientation requires the following principles:

• Standardization of service contract
• Service loose coupling
• Service abstraction
• Service reusability
• Service autonomy
• Service statelessness
• Service discoverability
• Service composability

Benefits

Service-orientation provides numerous benefits, including:

• Increased business agility
• Reduced IT complexity
• Increased ROI
• Improved business-IT alignment

See also

• Service-oriented architecture
• Microservices
• Web service
• Software as a Service