Service-oriented architecture (SOA) policy adds important business and technical flexibility and control to an SOA-based solution. At runtime, SOA policy provides ready access to change key operating characteristics of a service, including business parameters like approval limits and transaction routing. During development, SOA policy controls key aspects of how your services are built. It requires coordinated use of features and functions from multiple types of software tools and infrastructure products. Even though certain products have "policy management" in their names, getting your infrastructure set for SOA policy should start not by evaluating products, but rather by understanding the major functions required for effective policy management and how they work together. Only then will you be able to assess how your existing products and any new products — whether or not they have "policy management" in their names — will provide the integrated environment you need for effective SOA policy.

SOA Definition and Solutions

Designing Your Architecture For SOA Policy Management

Most organizations will find it best to use an incremental approach to SOA policy, starting with individual policy domains such as security or management. Before designing SOA policy infrastructure, be sure that you understand where your organization might first use SOA policy, your readiness for SOA policy management, and the general nature of the SOA policy life cycle. Because SOA policy management requires coordinated use of multiple products, architecture design is the right starting point — especially to set the stage for incrementally building the infrastructure. Design your architecture for SOA policy iteratively across three design stages:

1. Conceptual architecture for SOA policy. By first designing your conceptual foundation for SOA policy, you: 1) ensure that you understand SOA policy; 2) create a simple foundation for describing SOA policy to executives, developers, and other colleagues; and 3) construct a broad categorization scheme to understand where, how, and how extensively various products play a role in your infrastructure for SOA policy.

2. Logical architecture for SOA policy. Building on your conceptual architecture, you should next add an additional level of detail that elaborates on the major structural elements of your infrastructure for SOA policy. As you develop the logical architecture, you will start to see how SOA policy will integrate into your organization's full SOA platform, for example, by considering how an SOA repository might act as a repository for certain types of SOA policy.

3. Integration with your SOA platform strategy. With a logical architecture (or a first draft of one) in place, map SOA policy functions onto your SOA platform plans to answer, for example, how SOA policy might integrate with the messaging and management functions in your SOA platform. The specific products involved and the roles the products play will vary based on each specific organization's incremental development of its SOA platform and its SOA policy infrastructure.