What is Service Oriented Architecture? Patterns, Applications & Comparison

A service is well-defined, self-contained, and independent of the context or state of other services. Service oriented architecture (SOA) is a service requested by the consumer and the provider returning a response in terms of the service.

A Service Oriented Architecture is a collection of services that allows services to communicate with each other across different platforms and languages. The structure is implemented using a ‘loose-coupling’ system which is referred to as the client of a service, and its ability to remain independent of the required service. These service interfaces can be implemented with little or no knowledge of how the integration is implemented in-depth. 

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Common communication standards are used to rapidly incorporate into new applications without the need for performing deep integration every time, by making software components reusable via service interfaces. The code and data integrations are required to execute a complete and discrete business function, for this Service Oriented Architecture uses standard network protocols like SOAP/ HTTP or JSON/ HTTP. These protocols are used to send requests, to read, or to change data. 

SOAP: Simple Object Access Protocol

HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol

JSON: JavaScript Object Notation

The software architecture is becoming complex with a huge amount of development, and Service Oriented Architecture helps to cope with such challenges in a better way while documenting, creating, and maintaining the software systems.

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What Are Service Oriented Architecture Patterns?

Alexander defines the pattern as a three-part rule that expresses a relation between a certain context, problem, and solution. Name, context, problem, solution, forces, consequences, examples/ known uses, pattern relationships are the elements of the pattern.

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Service Oriented Architecture based on pattern approach provides a broad, platform-independent view on systems containing all relevant details about the technical realization alternatives.

• Different patterns for Service Oriented Architecture:

Design patterns (GoF) 

Software architecture patterns 

Analysis patterns 

Organizational patterns 

Pedagogical patterns (PPP)

• Pattern-based reference architecture for SOAs:

Principles are used in a specific way. 

Specific quality attributes are in focus. 

SOAs are described in a technology-neutral fashion.

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Why Is Service Oriented Architecture Important?

The Service Oriented Architecture aligns business users with Information Technology (IT). It increases business agility, improved business workflow, extensible architecture, enhanced reuse, and a longer life span of applications. 

Loosely Coupling System

Service Oriented Architecture is implemented with loose coupling to implement services without impacting other services or applications in the system. The advantage of a loosely coupled system is that it supports dynamic binding to other components of the structure while running the software. It can mediate the difference in the component’s structure, security model, protocols, semantics, and abstracting volatility.  

Transparency In Location

The service implementation location does not affect the consumer of the service.  

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Reusability

Service Oriented Architecture provides reuse facilities due to its compliance with multiple web services simultaneously. Thus, independent of the language used while implementing the system, it provides the possibility of a heterogeneous environment.

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Parallel Development

As Service Oriented Architecture is a layer-based structure and consists of an inventory of contract-based independent service, it supports a parallel development environment. 

Higher Availability with Better Scalability

A multi-layered Service Oriented Architecture can be clustered individually with balanced loading to scale up the overall system. It uses redundant routers, switches, dual communication links to clustered servers and databases by providing high availability of services.

Promotes interaction

Service Oriented Architecture is compatible with varying languages while communicating through a central interface that removes the restriction on a developer to be limited to a particular type of environment while running the system.

Interoperability

The code developed in Service Oriented Architecture can be used for different applications and reusing existing codes within a service reduces the development time significantly, ultimately reducing the development cost. Once standard communication protocol is set, then the platform can transmit data between clients and services by negotiating firewalls. 

The Application of Service Oriented Architecture in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a usage-based network access model to a common pool of configurable computing resources that can be provided and used quickly. These resources include networks, servers, storage systems, applications, and services. 

Cloud computing uses different models for horizontal scalings, such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The distinction of deployment models is made based on availability and installation location. 

Security and quality aspects are the major challenges in cloud computing: performance, latency, and availability. Integration, adaptation, agility, and possible relocation play critical roles in the implementation of cloud-based services. Service Oriented Architecture can be used to address these issues by defining central cloud standards and protocols.   

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What are the Differences between Service Oriented Architecture and SaaS?

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a cloud computing style in which resources are available on the cloud for users which reduces their software maintenance, update, and installation cost.

Service Oriented Architecture and SaaS are both advantages depending on the organization’s requirements and criteria. Both have some basic differences which are stated in the table below:

What are the Differences between Service Oriented Architecture and Microservices?

Both Service Oriented Architecture and Microservices are loosely coupled, reusable with specialized components to enhance agility, scalability, and redundancy in business; there are certain differences between them.

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Conclusion

The evolution of web application technologies with Service Oriented Architecture will scale up businesses by providing independent platforms for engineers to work on. The reduced cost of development can be utilized in other developing areas of the business. 

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