Why a Standards Based Service Oriented Architecture ?

A Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) can mean different things to different people. Ultimately, in its loosest form, if a program can be called in some way and give a result, it is providing a service and thus the infrastructure could be called ‘Service Oriented’. At the end of the day, many organizations have been doing this for a long time by implementing the business logic and screen logic separately so that the business logic may be called from multiple places so a SOA is nothing new apart from the terminology.

The nirvana that most organizations wish to get to is where their products and applications can interface seamlessly with each other on multiple platforms. This is sometimes achieved by what are called ‘Web Services’. However, this term is often also applied loosely on the basis that if a service is delivered via the Web it is a ‘Web Service’. These are generally proprietary, non standard Web Services which can only be integrated once you know the proprietary mechanism they are used.

What does offer the integration that organizations desire are Web Services that are implemented using W3C standards like WSDL and SOAP or specifications such as the REST architecture. The implementation of interfaces using these standards will enable applications to seamlessly interface with each other without any programming requirement. Portus specifically only offers access to data and business logic using recognized standards to enable simpler integration. Any reference to Web Services in Portus documentation set will mean standards based Web Services implementing using WSDL and SOAP or using the REST Architecture.

The Standards Used

The Simple Object Access Protocol or SOAP emerged as a mechanism to enable applications to access objects on any platform without any knowledge of the platform. Along with the Web Services Definition Language or WSDL, it forms the basis for the provision of standards based Web Services. It has been accepted as the best protocol available for accessing data and applications on heterogeneous platforms without any knowledge of the platform or the operating system where the accessed object resides. It is emerging as the agreed standard for future application development and integration efforts. In addition, Portus enables access to data and business logic using the REpresentational State Transfer or REST architecture which enables access to resources using a simple URL based approach.

Open and Simple Protocol

The protocol is open and thus is not controlled or owned by any vested interest. It has been designed to work with any software or hardware. Its greatest asset, like TCP/IP and HTTP before it, is its simplicity. It is possible to read SOAP requests and responses with the human eye and understand what they are trying to achieve. The SOAP Standard itself is extremely light particularly when compared to other standards for linking programs together such as CORBA, COM, COM+ and so on.

Platform and Operating System Agnostic

The test for any standard that claims to link software together is how easily it can be run on new platforms. In the case of SOAP, it is already in use on all of the leading platforms and operating systems available today. While there is a large amount of code available today that uses or implements SOAP in some way, it is the standard itself and not necessarily a set of code that is important. The SOAP standard can be used to solve each problem in the best possible way instead of relying on lots of infrastructure to enable SOAP. This flexibility enables the standard to be used on any platform or operating system.

Zero client footprint

As all of the leading technologies have an integrated understanding of how to call SOAP Services, there is absolutely no software footprint for the SOAP Service on the client platform. This leads to easier deployment and maintenance of SOAP based clients.

IBM, Microsoft, BEA, SAP and others agree

All the leading software manufacturers believe that standards based Web Services are the way of the future. All new and upcoming releases of software will include some support for SOAP. For applications that run on the desktop, this generally means that they can issue SOAP requests. For heavier duty 'server' applications, they will generally have the ability to issue SOAP requests and to service SOAP requests in some form or another.


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