SOA Service Oriented Architecture

Meaning

SOA is a principle, a paradigm for organizing and using IT services or services, i.e., encapsulated IT functions of different origins. The basic SOA principle is to coordinate simple services such as databases, servers or websites in such a way that more complex services or processes (e.g., an ordering process) can be organized or “orchestrated” with them. To do this, the services must meet a number of requirements:

• Registration in a directory
• Encapsulation of functions so that they can be closed off and used independently
• Platform-independent availability in the network
• Connection via a well-defined published interface that does not require knowledge of implementation details
• and some others

Advantages

Applications built according to the SOA architecture principle have a high degree of flexibility because suitable services can be coordinated from a wide variety of systems. Their autonomous character makes them reusable and, in the best case, entire business processes and their subtasks can be assembled and configured from existing services. This simplifies and accelerates application development and also saves costs.

Autonomous services that are integrated in an SOA-compliant manner exclusively via interfaces also remain autonomous. This means that there are no reciprocal functional interdependencies that could lead to dependencies. If necessary, it is quite easy to exchange one service for another, so that corporate independence is maintained.

Application practice

Successful customer communication requires increasingly complex document processes that generate customized output tailored precisely to the recipient in terms of content, form and media.

This is why the SOA principle lends itself in the area of CCM to orchestrating services from the areas of CRM, ECM, input management, databases, etc.. It also proves its worth in integrating enterprise-wide document services, such as those offered by the Serie M/. Corresponding interfaces have always been part of the product philosophy and enable a clear separation of business logic, data management and document creation. They facilitate the integration of product components into higher-level processes. Their reusability and universal applicability have already helped many companies to replace historically grown text solutions with the company-wide uniform document service of the Serie M/.