SOA Service Oriented Architecture Beginning of New Era
Explore SOA architecture and how Service-Oriented Architecture enables seamless app access across devices, separates UI from business logic, and promotes interoperability.
Web services are not new to the computer world; they have been in use for a long time. But nowadays, with the electronic revolution, we have a lot more devices with loaded applications. We want everything everywhere. We need access to facebook from PC, from mobile, from tablet.
Everyone has more than one email ID and wants to be online at once. Chatting with friends on gmail, hotmail, aol, yahoo, ICQ, facebook, linkedin, and many more. And it is on PC, mobile, and also on tablet. We are living in the era of rich user interface and powerful internet. Here most of the things are on clouds and still we have the leverage of our processor to deliver classy graphics and highly complicated features.
Here SOA comes into the picture. Now, when we want everything everywhere, we need a common way of communication which can be used everywhere. Web services are light weight processes running on HTTP and can be consumed anywhere. So, we are getting all our applications wherever we go.
SOA is a software concept which is highly used nowadays. There are two main benefits of SOA: one is that it completely differentiates the user interface part and business logic part, and the other is its interoperability.
I personally like the first part, as I am not a designer kind of person. If you have fixed requirements for your project, then the developer can concentrate on service development and the designer can concentrate on design. Developers don't have to bother about what is at the UI end—it may be JQuery UI, Silverlight, Android, or WPF rich applications. And because of this, things will get a lot easier. Now, developers will create business logic and UI guys from different areas create UI for different platforms and integrate the business logic to that.
And now the real charm of web services: interoperability. I am a .NET developer, my friend is a Java developer. Now I developed logic and he wants to use it. Java and .NET are like brothers, but still he needs to re-code things. Now with web services, this problem is solved. I just put my logic in a web service and Java guys call that web service from a Java application without any problem. This is true for the vice versa case as well. So, it's a wonderful thing. Basically, I just loved this concept.
Now, in the .NET framework, there is a web service feature which provides basic functionality, but with the arrival of WCF, the game has changed a lot. WCF provides a seriously wide range of facilities to developers to do their tasks. We will jump deeper into WCF in upcoming articles.
Till then, check out some further details for SOA.
Frequently Asked Questions
SOA is a software concept that uses web services as lightweight processes running on HTTP to enable applications to communicate and share functionality across different platforms and devices. It separates the user interface from business logic, allowing developers and designers to work independently while maintaining interoperability between different programming languages and systems.
The two main benefits of SOA are separation of concerns (dividing UI and business logic) and interoperability. The separation allows developers to focus on service development while designers handle the user interface independently. Interoperability enables different platforms and programming languages, like .NET and Java, to seamlessly communicate and share services without requiring recoding.
SOA uses web services that operate over HTTP, making them lightweight and accessible from any device with internet connectivity—whether it's a PC, mobile phone, or tablet. This allows users and developers to access the same applications and services across multiple platforms without needing platform-specific implementations.
In today's world where users need access to applications on PCs, mobile devices, and tablets simultaneously, SOA provides a unified approach through web services. Rather than rebuilding applications for each platform, developers can create a single service that works everywhere, making development more efficient and maintenance easier.
While the .NET framework's basic web service feature provides fundamental functionality, WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) offers a significantly broader range of facilities and capabilities for developers. WCF is the more advanced solution for building service-oriented applications in the .NET environment.