What is services oriented architecture

The use of SOA is on the rise. In SOA, software components function as their own loosely coupled units. These units provide services or data using a network protocol, making them independent of vendors or proprietary technology systems. These services can be independent, repeatable, and self-contained tasks of a global system functionality—consider them the building blocks of a large consumer service where each feature is composed of multiple small services that can be developed, managed, modified and replaced independently of other components and services.

Compare SOA to microservice architecture. Service Oriented Architecture allows the flexibility to treat every component independent of the global service that requires those components. This approach solves some of the key challenges facing large enterprise IT systems and has driven the growth and popularity of the SOA design paradigm.

Most of the drivers are shared across earlier design philosophies like object-oriented programming and component-based engineering, such as :. The most important part of this concept is that the client, which in itself can be a service, can communicate with the service even if they are not closely related.

This facilitated communication is achieved through the implementation of a specified interface that is able to perform the necessary actions to allow for the transmission of data. A common example of this increased ability to communicate without service constraints involves coding languages used by these services.

There is an array of different languages from which software platforms are created and not all of these languages can interact fluently, without encountering communication issues. By using an SOA, it is not necessary for the client to understand the language that is being used by the service, but instead, it relies on a structured interface that is able to process the transmission between the service and the client.

The more prevalent factors driving interest and growth of SOA capabilities in the modern software engineering landscape include:. Modern enterprise IT solutions are built on multiple layers of technology that evolve constantly.

New components are integrated and legacy systems are updated, infrastructure resources are provisioned and scaled to meet variable and unpredictable demand. When the underlying services are loosely coupled, they can be located and communicate with each other through an interface, such as an API, over the network using standardized protocols of the OSI model.

Microservices are cloud-native and are designed to bring extreme agility and to provide the most autonomous way to deliver software. The two approaches are similar and aim to promote the same reusability and agility but they do differ in scope: SOA looks at services in the context of the enterprise and their use in many different applications whereas microservices are focused on the architecture of the application itself.

In many ways, microservices can be seen as an evolution of SOA: although the latter already enforces a modular approach, microservices provide a number of different enhancements to this — but it is not a silver bullet and not every organization is equipped to provide a full-blown microservices architecture. To learn more about this topic, please refer to the Microservices Architecture in OutSystems documentation.

In a word, yes. Like all SOA environments, OutSystems delivers applications that are functionally complete and which address non-functional requirements using services that are properly governed and easily discoverable. There are two key distinctions:. Most SOA vendors provide a set of tools and a structure with which to create services; but these are provided without any intellectual property, so all services have to be created using in-house intelligence.

With OutSystems, business logic is included with each component in the platform, enhancing the speed with which applications can be created. Any changes to the component are automatically replicated in every instance where that component is used, so incremental adjustments to an application can be deployed in hours. Being a platform, OutSystems provides greater automation for service deployment, discovery, governance, and impact analysis on service changes, which are fundamental to achieve greater agility.

Most SOAs are object-oriented, meaning that every aspect of the architecture is represented as objects which are then used to build services. Working with objects is much quicker than coding from scratch but still requires extensive developer training. The use of visual programming also means that other people in the business are able to use OutSystems and that — at a time when developer resources are expensive and scarce — people without a coding background can become fluent in the development environment in only a few months.

And to dive even deeper into the world of OutSystems architecture, be sure you join us in our upcoming Tech Talk Head-to-head: Monolith vs. On June 23, our team of experts will share all the best practices you need to know to define a modular and future-ready architecture. Don't miss! Now, as Product Manager at OutSystems, he makes sure our low-code platform is everything our customers could dream of. By submitting this form you consent to the processing of your personal data by OutSystems as described in our Terms and our Privacy Statement.

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Create an agile infrastructure—and enable an adaptive organization. Faster time to market and greater flexibility: The reusability of services makes it much easier and faster to assemble applications, instead of developers starting from scratch each time as would be the case with monolithic applications.

Use legacy infrastructure in new markets: SOA makes it easier for developers to take the functionality of one platform or environment and scale and extend it to new ones.

Reduced costs from greater agility and more efficient development Easy maintenance: Because all services are self-contained and independent, they can be modified and updated as needed without affecting other services.

Scalability: Since SOA permits services to run across multiple services, platforms, and programming languages, scalability is greatly increased. And SOA uses a standardized communication protocol, allowing enterprises to decrease interaction between clients and services.

Lowering this level of interaction allows apps to be scaled with less pressure and inconvenience. Convenience of availability: SOA facilities are available to anyone.

The building blocks of a service-oriented architecture are made up of 3 roles. Service provider A service provider creates web services and provides them to a service registry.