The Definitive Definition of SOA
Let's stop wasting time trying to come up with clever definitions of service-oriented architecture and get down to the business of using it.
You might be thinking at this point that I'm about to conclude that SOA is the next logical step. It is the next logical step, but that's not nearly as important as the fact that SOA benefits from the experience we have gained from all that preceded it. SOA is growing in popularity now because the tools to create SOA are now available and easier to use than ever. Average programmers now have enough experience under their belts to be able to understand SOA and code it, and that is why SOA is increasing in popularity. We could have reaped the benefits of SOA ages ago, but fewer people knew how to get there, then.
When you get down to it, all SOA really amounts to is extracting something you would normally program into a monolithic application and running it as a service that two or more applications can access over a network. That, my friends, is a networked subroutine.
With that definitive definition out of the way, we pundits can now move onto more important SOA topics.
