Service Layers

While the service-orientation concepts we covered in the previous chapter are what fundamentally define SOA and distinguish it from other architectural platforms, they are still just theory. To bring service-orientation into a real-life automation solution, we need to provide an environment capable of supporting its fundamental principles.

As we've already established, the Web services framework provides us with the technology and the design paradigm with which these principles can be realized. To then implement service-orientation in support of manifesting the contemporary SOA characteristics and benefits we identified back in Chapter 3, we need a means of coordinating and propagating service-orientation throughout an enterprise. This can be accomplished by service layer abstraction.

This chapter forms an approach to structuring and delivering specialized service layers around the delivery of key contemporary SOA characteristics.