ABSTRACT
A major paradigm shift has been experienced in the way the software applications are designed, architected, delivered and consumed. Service Oriented Architecture is the emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries.
Services are more than just software components as they are generic enough to be platform neutral and self-describing and particularly their ability to enable business. So these are autonomous platform-independent computational elements that can be described, published, discovered, orchestrated and programmed using XML artifacts for the purpose of developing massively distributed interoperable applications. Thus Reusability and Interoperability are buzzwords in the perspective of SOA.
Combined with recent developments in the area of distributed systems, workflow management systems, business protocols and languages, services can provide the automated support needed for e-business integration both at the data and business logic level. They also provide a sound support framework for developing complex business transaction sequences and business collaboration applications.
Adopting the service oriented computing paradigm has the potential to bring about reduced programming complexity and costs, lower maintenance costs, faster time-to-market, new revenue streams and improved operational efficiency.
Besides there are number of challenging issues - service modeling and design methodologies, architectural approaches, service development, deployment and composition, programming and evolution of services and their supporting technologies and infrastructure.